Laravel belongsTo Relationship

Question

Ok, I am a little confused with the belongsTo relationship for Models.

I have a Feeds model that extends Eloguent.

I have created a relationship function called User.

public function user(){
  return $this->belongsTo('User'); // and I also tried return $this->belongsTo('User', 'user_id');
}

On the view I am trying to do :

@foreach($feeds as $feed)
{{$feed->user()->first_name}} {{$feed->user()->last_name}}
@endforeach

but I am getting this error Undefined property: Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Relations\BelongsTo::$last_name

When I do $feed->user->first_name it works fine, but I thought user()->first_name was more efficient. What am I doing wrong?

This are the fields and data types of the database:

feeds

feed_id INT
user_id INT
feed Text
created_at TIMESTAMP
updated_at TIMSTAMP
school_id INT

users

user_id INT
username VARCHAR
password VARCHAR
first_name VARCHAR
last_name VARCHAR
created_at TIMESTAMP
updated_at TIMESTAMP

Answer 1

Use the dynamic property

$feed->user->first_name;

When you use the dynamic property it is the same as doing the below except Laravel does it for you using the magic __call() method.

$feed->user()->first()->first_name;

using just the function $feed->user() allows you to get the relationship which allows you to add extra constraints and with relations before fetching the entity on the other end.