Laravel BelongsTo returning empty object - php

Question

I have a table called messages and users. the users is the default users table generated by laravel auth. for some reason in my postMessage function in my controller when i try the return
return response()->json(['s' => $broadcastMessage, 'r' => $broadcastMessage->MessageOwner()]);
the relationship ship returns an empty object. i know that the MessageOwner relationship works because i use it in a different function and it works fine but i can't figure out why it wont work here? I made sure and it stores the user_id and it's the correct id.
Note that it does return the message.
here is migration up function
Schema::create('messages', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->bigIncrements('id');
$table->bigInteger('user_id')->unsigned()->index();
$table->foreign('user_id')->references('id')->on('users');
$table->longText('message');
$table->timestamps();
});
here is my message model
<?php
namespace App;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
class Message extends Model
{
protected $table = 'messages';
protected $fillable = [
'user_id', 'message'
];
public function user()
{
return $this->belongsTo(User::class, 'user_id', 'id');
}
public function MessageOwner()
{
return $this->belongsTo(User::class, 'user_id', 'id');
}
public function job()
{
return $this->belongsToMany(Job::class);
}
}
and here is my controller function
public function postMessage(Request $request)
{
try {
$message = Message::create([
'user_id' => $request->input('user_id'),
'message' => $request->input('message')
]);
$job = Job::find($request->input('job_id'));
$job->messages()->attach($message);
$broadcastMessage = Message::find($message->id);
return response()->json(['s' => $broadcastMessage, 'r' => $broadcastMessage->MessageOwner()]);
event(new MessagePushed($broadcastMessage));
return response()->json([
'success' => true,
'message' => 'success',
]);
} catch (\Exception $exception) {
return response()->json([
'success' => false,
'error' => true,
'message' => $exception->getMessage()
], 500);
}
}

Answer 1

You are calling the relationship method, not the it's value.
Try without the ():
return response()->json(['s' => $broadcastMessage, 'r' => $broadcastMessage->MessageOwner]);
Also you should consider using lower_snake_case for all your relationship methods and name the foreign key by relationshio_name_id, so you don't need to manually define the foreign key name, Laravel will automatically guess it.