Laravel trying to check if the user has relationship with post - php

Question

I have posts and these posts can be saved by users to read later. I created this relation and I can save or delete them easily. The problem is I can't check if the post is saved or not in frontend. Now I wrote some code to handle this but it doesn't seem to work. here is my controller code:
$articleFlag = 1;
$userID = Auth::User()->id;
if (count($bestarticles) > 0) {
foreach ($bestarticles as $bestarticle) {
$saveddata = DB::table('savearticle')->where('user_id', $userID && 'article_id', $bestarticle);
if (count($saveddata) > 0) {
$articleFlag = 1;
} else {
$articleFlag = 2;
}
} //foeach endes here
} //first if endes here
and than I pass the $articleFlag to the view than checking it's value with an if
But the problem is, no matter what I do if (count($bestarticles) > 0) returns true and I get value 1 in view.
Does anybody have any idea what I might be missing?
Here is my user controller relationshio:
function savedarticle(){
return $this->belongsToMany('App\User', 'savearticle', 'user_id',
'article_id');
}
and here goes the functions that i use for saving and deleting:
function savethearticle(Article $article){
$this->savedarticle()->syncWithoutDetaching([$article->id]);
}
function removethearticle(Article $article){
$this->savedarticle()->detach([$article->id]);
}
But there is nothing you need to worry about. I'm able to delete and add.
Or is there another way to check for existing relationship in view or a better way to check it in controller and pass into view?
I am using Laravel 5.4.

Answer 1

It looks as though you have a Collection of Article models, and you're trying to determine whether it is related to the User or not.
If that's the case, I would suggest eager loading the User relation when you originally query the Article models. This has the advantage of using one query to load the relationship, rather than one per Article.
$userId = Auth::id();
$articles = Article::with(['savedarticle' => function ($query) use ($userId) {
return $query->where('user_id' => $userId);
}])->get();
With this Collection, because we have loaded specifically the currently authenticated User, you can then proceed knowing that if the savedarticle relation has a count of 1, that the User relation exists.
foreach ($articles as $article) {
if ($article->savedarticle->count()) {
// User has already saved article
} else {
// User has not saved article
}
}

Answer 2

Should you not be passing the id of bestarticle in the Where clause? Also, it requires a ->get() to actually fire the request off to the database and run the query.
$saveddata = DB::table('savearticle')->where('user_id', $userID && 'article_id', $bestarticle);
Should be
$saveddata = DB::table('savearticle')->where('user_id', $userID && 'article_id', $bestarticle->id)->get();