Laravel - Retrieving associated model using all function - php

Question

I am writing a program that has a many-to-many relationship between clients and concerns. I have configured my models to use the belongsToMany() function as outlined in the Laravel documents. Please see the code for the two models below:
Client.php
<?php
namespace App\Models;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Factories\HasFactory;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
class Client extends Model
{
use HasFactory;
protected $fillable = [
'first_name',
'last_name',
'email',
'preferred_day',
'preferred_time',
'presenting_concerns',
'is_active',
];
public function invoices() {
return $this->hasMany(Invoice::class);
}
public function concerns() {
return $this->belongsToMany(Concern::class);
}
}
Concern.php
<?php
namespace App\Models;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Factories\HasFactory;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
class Concern extends Model
{
use HasFactory;
protected $guarded = [
'concern',
];
public function clients() {
return $this->belongsToMany(Client::class);
}
}
I was able to create some sample data using factories and php artisan tinker. I am now in the process of building out my views. However when I call
$clients = Client::all()->concerns()
in my controller, I get a concerns does not exist error message. I did a dd on just Clients::all(), and I don't see the concerns attached to the returned model. From my understanding, with just the call to all() function, I just return the client model. However, I was hoping by calling the concerns() function, I would be able to return the concerns as well. Is it possible to retrieve all clients and their concerns in one call?
Please note that I can use Client::find(2)->concerns() but that does not help me in my case because that only returns the concerns for client with ID 2.

Answer 1

Yes you can do this. You need to eager load your relation of interest.
If you do the following, you will load the relation and will be able to see it when doing dd().
$clients = Client::with('concerns')->get();