Laravel Eloquent 'with' has empty result - php

Question

I am working on a small API based on Laravel 5.3 passport (https://laravel.com/docs/5.3/passport).
After Googling a lot I didn't find an answer yet to my problem.
I got the following function that has to retrieve the people I follow from the database. This is working great. After that I need to grab all friends statuses from the DB with the user info, drink info, file info and toast info. This also works great. It isn't working when file or toast or drink is empty. I get an empty array back.
The function:
public function index(Request $request)
{
$user = $request->user();
$friends = Follow::with(['user'])->where('follows_user_id', '=', $user->id)->get();
foreach ($friends as $friend) {
$status = Status::with(['user', 'drink', 'file', 'toast'])->where(
'user_id', '=', $friend->id
)->CreatedAtDescending()->get();
}
if (!isset($status) || empty($status)) {
return response(['message' => 'Nothing found.'], 404);
}
return $status;
}
How can I get the result back, even when the drink or file or toast is empty?

Answer 1

I got it working! The solution is:
public function index(Request $request)
{
$user = $request->user();
$friends = Follow::with(['user'])->where('follows_user_id', '=', $user->id)->get();
foreach ($friends as $friend) {
$status = Status::with(['user' => function ($query) use ($friend) {
$query->where('id', '=', $friend->following_user_id);
}, 'drink', 'file', 'toast'])->get();
}
if (!isset($status) || empty($status)) {
return response(['message' => 'Nothing found.'], 404);
}
return $status;
}
It where just some small issues in the query.