filtering result using eager loading - php

Question

I am creating a search in laravel for an API but my search gives me the wrong results. I am trying to search by location and food type. I have the following tables:
foods
shops
shop_food
users
comments
Here is my search code:
public function searchShop($food, $location)
{
//
if($food == " " || $location == " "){
return $this->index();
}
//get all records where city and food are equal to
$shops = Shop::where('city', '=', $location)
->with('comments.user')
->with(['foods'=> function($query) use($food){
$query->where('name','=', 'fish pepper'); }])
->get();
//check if empty and return all
if($shops->isEmpty()){
return $this->index();
}
return $shops;
}
my result is the below instead of just the record where location and food it shows all the shops filtered by location even where food isnt a match :

Answer 1

The with method that you're using does not filter in the way that you think it does. Your code actually filters the food results, telling Eloquent to retrieve all Shop and either no foods, or the foods with the name fish pepper. This is called constraining eager loads.
The method you're looking for is whereHas rather than with. This is referred to as querying a relationships existence.
$shops = Shop::where('city', '=', $location)
->with('comments.user')
->whereHas('foods', function($query) use($food){
$query->where('name','=', 'fish pepper');
})
->get();
This will now return only Shops that have a corresponding food entry with the name fish pepper.
If memory serves, whereHas won't actually populate foods for you, but in this instance you wouldn't need it, as it's safe to assume that they all have fish pepper. If you do want to pull all foods, change with('comments.user') to with(['comments.user', 'foods']).
Documentation for whereHas and other ways of achieving this can be found here.
Documentation about what you were doing with the with method can be found here.
Hope that helps.