Laravel 5.1 - Relationship method must return an object of type

Question

My application takes payment from users but sub accounts must not be allowed to see the payment screen.

I have a Route::group which checks if the user is allowed to pay through Middleware. The handle function look like this

    if(!\Auth::user()->isTeacher) 
{
    \Auth::logout();
     return redirect('/login')->withErrors([$error = 'Sorry there was a problem. Please notify your School']);
}        

return $next($request);

and the isTeacher() function

if($this->school_id) {
$teachers = $this->school->find($this->id)->teachers;
$isTeacher = false;
foreach ($teachers as $teacher) {
    if ($teacher->id == \Auth::user()->id) {$teacher = true;}
}

return $isTeacher;

}

Finally the School relationship looks like the following

return $this->hasOne('App\School', 'id', 'school_id');

The error I keep receiving is

LogicException in Model.php line 2667: Relationship method must return an object of type Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Relations\Relation

In part of the error tree?? it shows this which is from the Middleware

at Model->__get('isTeacher') in MustBeTeacherToMakePayment.php line 19

which is the if statement on the first line above.

Is anyone able to tell me what I'm doing wrong? This is driving me mad

Answer 1

Instead of calling the isTeacher() function you are accessing isTeacher attribute. Eloquent sees a method of that name and identifies it as a method that should return relation definition. And then you get the error because relation definition methods should return Relation object.

You have to replace

if(!\Auth::user()->isTeacher)

with

if(!\Auth::user()->isTeacher())

and the error will be gone.