Laravel get data from many to many relation

Question

For a school project, I'm creating a website in the Laravel framework. I can't work with the data from a many-to-many table in my controller.

Here are my models:

class Item extends Eloquent {
    public function Tags()
    {
        return $this->belongsToMany('Tag', 'items_has_tags', 'items_id', 'tags_id');
    }
}

class Tag extends Eloquent {
    public function LearningMaterials()
    {
        return $this->belongsToMany('LearningMaterial', 'learning_materials_has_tags', 'tags_id', 'learning_materials_id');
    }
}

I want to iterate all tags from my items in my controller:

//get all items
$all = Item::where('public', '1')->get();

foreach($allLm as $item){
     $tags = $item->Tags();

     var_dump('will iterate');

     foreach($tags as $t){
         var_dump('will not iterate');
     }
}

What is wrong with my code? How can I handle the tags from my items?

FYI: I'm creating a search engine. If the user inserts an input value like "mana", all items with tag "management" should be shown.

Answer 1

Laravel's belongsToMany method queries related models and doesn't get them. That's because you might want to have some additional constraints in your query. What you need to do is:

$tags = $item->Tags()->get();

Or simply:

$tags = $item->Tags;

Answer 2

Calling the relationship function will return a relation object (in this case an instance of BelongsToMany). You can use this to run add further components to your query before running it.
For example:

$only4Tags = $item->Tags()->take(4)->get();

If you want the result of your relation, call get() or simpler, just use the magic property:

$tags = $item->Tags()->get();
$tags = $item->Tags;