perplexing check box behavior - php

Question

I have a edit form with some checkboxes that I am trying to make checked when the associated many to many relationship is established.
Distributors belong to many beers
Beers belong to many distributors
in my controller I have:
$breweries = Brewery::lists('name', 'id');
$all_dist = Distributor::all();
$beer = Beer::find($id);
$distributions = [];
foreach ($beer->distributors as $distributor)
{
$distributions[$distributor->id] = BeerDistribution::where('beer_id', '=', $beer->id)
->where('distributor_id', '=', $distributor->id)->first()->price;
}
return View::make('beers.edit', ['beer' => $beer, 'distributors' => $all_dist, 'distributions' => $distributions, 'breweries' => $breweries, 'styles' => $styles]);
and I in my edit form I have:
{{ Form::model($beer, ['route' => ['beers.update', $beer->id], 'method' => 'PATCH']) }}
#foreach ($distributors as $distributor)
<?php $carried = in_array($distributor->id, array_keys($distributions)) ? true : false ?>
{{ Form::checkbox('distributors[]', $distributor->id, $carried); }}
{{ Form::label($distributor->name) }}
{{ Form::label('price' . $distributor->id, 'Retail:') }}
<?php $price = $carried ? $distributions[$distributor->id] : null ?>
{{ Form::text('price' . $distributor->id, $price ) }}
#endforeach
{{ Form::submit('Save') }}
{{ Form::close() }}
Basically I am passing an associated array of each distributor_id => price. This array also tells me which distributors the beer already belongs to so that I can mark those checked off in my edit form.
Here's where things get wonky. When I load this form, all the checkboxes will be checked no matter what. If I change my controller loop to this:
foreach ($beer->distributors()->lists('distributor_id') as $distributor_id)
Then I can do create my array.
Why does calling $beer->distributors in the controller would result in all the checkboxes being checked?

Answer 1

The problem is with the last argument : $carried
{{ Form::checkbox('distributors[]', $distributor->id, [ "checked" => $carried ]); }}
Pass the last parameter as array, and tell it exactly which attribute to modify and the attribute value.