Eloquent collide column names - php

Question

I have the following tables:
users: id, name, ...
companies: id, name, ...
I have a scope with a LIKE operator, And I use it to search in both users.name and companies.name as follows:
public function scopeSearch(Builder $query, string $term = null)
{
$query->join('companies', 'companies.id', '=', 'users.company_id');
$term = $term.'%';
$query->where('users.name', 'like', $term)
->orWhere('companies.name', 'like', $term);
}
Action:
$users = User::query()
->search($request->input('q'))
->with('company')
->paginate();
// ...
Since name was used in both tables, Laravel can't distinguish between them, so it ends up filling the users.name with a companies.name:
The view looks like this:
#foreach($users as $user)
// ...
<th scope="row">{{ $user->id }}</th>
<td>{{ $user->name }}</td> // wrong: this gives the company.name
<td>{{ $user->company->name }}</td>
<td>{{ $user->email }}</td>
// ...
#endforeach
One solution to solve this is by using select and some aliases, but that would be a nasty solution.
Any good solution?
Update 1: I don't want to use whereHas since it's slower than joining when it comes to using the LIKE operator.
Update 2: another solution is to alias the companies.name and the users.name as follows:
public function scopeSearch(Builder $query, string $term = null)
{
$query->join('companies', 'companies.id', '=', 'users.company_id')
->select(['*', 'companies.name as company_name', 'users.name as user_name']);
}
<td>{{ $user->user_name }}</td>
<td>{{ $user->company_name }}</td>
This works fine, but if (for any reason) I want to get rid of the searching capability, I also need to modify the view, so a dependency has been introduced here.

Answer 1

I would probably rewrite the search-scope to search for the company name through relations and using whereHas(), instead of joining it in. That way you never have ambiguous column names when using that scope.
It would generate a different query, but you would end up with the same result.
public function scopeSearch(Builder $query, string $term = null)
{
$term = $term.'%';
return $query->where('name', 'like', $term)
->orWhereHas('company', function($query) use ($term) {
return $query->where('name', 'like', $term);
});
}

Answer 2

After doing some experiments, I found that using the whereIn clause is faster and more convenient than using join/whereHas:
$query->where('name', 'like', $term)
->orWhereIn('company_id', function($query) use ($term) {
$query->select('id')->from('companies')->where('name', 'like', $term);
});
The action remains the same:
<td>{{ $user->name }}</td>
<td>{{ $user->company->name }}</td>
And as I said it's much faster than joining and whereHas.
Here is my benchmark:
600ms: whereHas.
500ms: join.
130ms: whereIn.