Laravel 1-N relationship not working - php

Question

I'm starting my first Laravel project. I set up and tested all the relationships between tables and all of them look fine but one 1-N relationship. I cannot find the error, could you please help me?
Tables:
User:
*id
*username
Feeling:
*id
*name
*user (it points to User:id)
Class User
<?php
class User extends Eloquent {
protected $table = 'User';
public function feelings() {
return $this->hasMany('Feeling', 'user');
}
}
Class Feeling
class Feeling extends Eloquent {
protected $table = 'Feeling';
public function user() {
return $this->belongsTo('User','user');
}
}
If I execute:
$feeling = Feeling::find(1);
echo($feeling->user->username);
I get an error "Trying to get property of non-object".
If I execute
$feeling = Feeling::find(1);
It prints the Json array of the feeling object and if I execute
$feeling = Feeling::find(1);
echo($feeling->user);
It prints "1". So I'm getting the user ID of the database, but not the user object. I would like to get the user object instead.
Thank you very much.

Answer 1

Problem:
Everything is fine but you have used user as your local key and that's why the confusion because, when you call $feeling->user the magic method __get() is called which is available in the Illuminate/Database/Eloquent and it; as given below:
public function __get($key)
{
return $this->getAttribute($key);
}
The getAttribute() method looks several places for the key and sequentially it looks into the Model itself at first and then looks into the relationship array and then at last checks if the key for examaple in your case user exists as a method in the Model which is Feeling in your case, then it gets the related model and finds the key value.
Hence, your Feeling has a field as user so before it goes to the related model it just finds the field in current Model's attributes so it thinks that, user field has been requested for and you get the numeric id instead if related model instance.
Solution:
Solution is pretty simple, change the related field name (user) to anything else, better is user_id but you are free to use anything but make sure that doesn't create any further confusions. So, if you change it to user_id then make changes to your both models, for example:
public function user() {
return $this->belongsTo('User','user_id');
}
But, if you use user_id then you may omit the second argument from both model's relationship method, so you may write:
// Feeling
return $this->belongsTo('User');
// User
return $this->hasMany('Feeling');