Eloquent HasMany relationship, with limited record count - php

Question

I want to limit related records from
$categories = Category::with('exams')->get();
this will get me exams from all categories but what i would like is to get 5 exams from one category and for each category.
Category Model
public function Exams() {
return $this->hasMany('Exam');
}
Exam Model
public function category () {
return $this->belongsTo('Category');
}
I have tried couple of things but couldnt get it to work
First what i found is something like this
$categories = Category::with(['exams' => function($exams){
$exams->limit(5);
}])->get();
But the problem with this is it will only get me 5 records from all categories. Also i have tried to add limit to Category model
public function Exams() {
return $this->hasMany('Exam')->limit(5);
}
But this doesnt do anything and returns as tough it didnt have limit 5.
So is there a way i could do this with Eloquent or should i simply load everything (would like to pass on that) and use break with foreach?

Answer 1

There is no way to do this using Eloquent's eager loading. The options you have are:
Fetch categories with all examps and take only 5 exams for each of them:
$categories = Category::with('exams')->get()->map(function($category) {
$category->exams = $category->exams->take(5);
return $category;
});
It should be ok, as long as you do not have too much exam data in your database - "too much" will vary between projects, just best try and see if it's fast enough for you.
Fetch only categories and then fetch 5 exams for each of them with $category->exams. This will result in more queries being executed - one additional query per fetched category.

Answer 2

I just insert small logic inside it which is working for me.
$categories = Category::with('exams');
Step 1: I count the records which are coming in response
$totalRecordCount = $categories->count()
Step 2: Pass total count inside the with function
$categories->with([
'exams' => function($query) use($totalRecordCount){
$query->take(5*$totalRecordCount);
}
])
Step 3: Now you can retrieve the result as per requirement
$categories->get();