Get posts foreach categories in Laravel - php

Question

I am using Laravel 4
Here is my Controller:
public function getArticles()
{
$categories = Category::with(['posts' => function($query){
$query->orderBy('updated_at', 'DESC')->take(4)->get();
}])->get();
return View::make('articles', compact('categories'));
}
Here is my View:
#foreach($categories as $category)
<h1>{{$category->title}}</h1>
<ul>
#foreach($category->posts as $post)
<li>
{{ $post->title }}
</li>
#endforeach
</ul>
#endforeach
My Category Model:
class Category extends Basemodel {
public function posts(){
return $this->hasMany('Post');
}
}
And my Post Model:
class Post extends Basemodel {
public function category(){
return $this->belongsTo('Category');
}
}
So it displays correctly my 6 categories (titles), but it only displays 4 posts total, I would like to display the 4 latest posts for each category (24 posts total).
I tried many things, and searched online but couldn't find a way around it.

Answer 1

You can't do that using limit in the eager loading closure, because, as you noticed, it limits the other query, that fetches all the posts.
You can easily get single related model with eager loading for hasMany with a helper relation:
public function latestPost()
{
return $this->hasOne('Post')->latest();
}
but for n related models per each parent, you need a bit more complex solution - take a look at:
n per parent
1 per parent

Answer 2

Maybe you can get use $categories = Category::all() to get all categories first.
foreach $categories and get the latest four posts by $posts=$category->posts
merge the posts array into one array
pass categories and posts to the view.
Cheers.
I hope you can write the correct foreach. And when retrieving the posts, use $category->posts instead of $category->posts(), which results in an error.