Laravel Model Count By Relationship - php

Question

I have an eCommerce site with a Product model and a ProductCategory model. I currently show products on the page from the Product model but would like to be able to get a list of all the categories with products in the current model and how many products are in each category. I can get the overall count but can't figure out how to get the list of categories being shown and how many results per category have been returned.
Product Model
Product_ID
Product_Name
Product_Description
Category_ID (Many-To-1: ProductCategory.Category_ID
ProductCategory Model
Category_ID
Category_Name
Currently, I access the results in the blade using...
#foreach($products->chunk(3) as $row)
<div class="item-row">
#foreach($row as $product)
<div class="item item-thumbnail" style="height: 250px;">
<a href="product_detail.html" class="item-image">
#if(empty($product->Images{0}->original_image))
<img style="width: 100px; height: 100px;"
src="https://example.com/100x100/d3d3d3/fff.gif&text=No+Image"
alt="" />
#else
<img style="width: 100px; height: 100px;"
src="https://cdn.example.com.au/products/{{$product->id}}/{{$product->Images{0}->original_image}}"
alt="" />
#endif
</a>
<div class="item-info">
<h4 class="item-title">
<a href="/store/{{$category->alias}}/{{$product->alias}}">
{{$product->product_name}}
</a>
</h4>
<p class="item-desc"> </p>
#if(empty($product->special_price))
<div class="item-price">
${{$product->normal_price}}
</div>
#else
<div class="item-price">
${{$product->special_price}}
</div>
<div class="item-discount-price">
${{$product->normal_price}}
</div>
#endif
</div>
</div>
#endforeach
</div>
#endforeach
And would like to be able to generate a list of all the categories with products displayed as...
#foreach($products->categories as $category)
<li>
{{$category->category_name}} ({{$category->count}})
</li>
#endforeach
All from within the same model.
Additional
If it helps clarify I don't want the model to change drastically in that I still want to be able to access the products in the model from the blade template as is currently done but would like to also be able to pull a list of categories such as the below example...
| Product_ID | Product_Name | Category_ID |
| ---------- | ------------ | ----------- |
| 1 | Product 1 | 1 |
| 2 | Product 2 | 1 |
| 3 | Product 3 | 2 |
| Category ID | Category Name |
| ----------- | ------------- |
| 1 | Category 1 |
| 2 | Category 2 |
And wind up with the following table on my page to show the product categories being shown in the results...
| Category Name | # Products |
| ------------- | ---------- |
| Category 1 | 2 |
| Category 2 | 1 |

Answer 1

It would be super helpful if you provided the code where you query the products and categories.
But here's essentially what you need to do. You need to make use of ->withCount(..):
$products = Product::with([
'categories' => function ($query) {
// Adds count of category-related products
$query->withCount('products as count');
},
])->get();
And then this would work in your view:
#foreach($products as $product)
#foreach($product->categories as $category)
<li>{{$category->category_name}} ({{$category->count}})</li>
#endforeach
#endforeach