Accessing nested relationship with Laravel 4 - php

Question

I'm having trouble figuring out how to access a nested relationship within Laravel. The specific example I have is a Movie that has many entires in my Cast table which has one entry in my People table. These are my models:
MOVIE
class Movie extends Eloquent {
protected $primaryKey = 'movie_id';
protected $table = 'movie';
// Relationships
public function cast()
{
return $this->hasMany('MovieCast', 'movie_id');
}
}
MOVIECAST
class MovieCast extends Eloquent {
protected $table = 'movie_cast';
public function person()
{
return $this->hasOne('Person', 'person_id');
}
public function netflix()
{
return $this->belongsTo('Movie', 'movie_id');
}
}
PERSON
class Person extends Eloquent {
protected $primaryKey = 'person_id';
protected $table = 'people';
public function movieCast()
{
return $this->belongsTo('MovieCast', 'person_id');
}
}
In my controller I can access the cast (containing person_id and role_id) like so:
public function movie($id)
{
$movie = Movie::find($id);
$cast = $movie->cast();
return View::make('movie')->with(array(
'movie' => $movie,
'cast' => $cast
));
}
...but I don't know how to access the corresponding name field in my People table.
EDIT 1:
Using the classes exactly as defined below in #msturdy's answer, with the controller method above I try to render the person names like so inside my view:
#foreach($cast->person as $cast_member)
{{$cast_member->person->name}}
#endforeach
Doing this i get the error:
Undefined property: Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Relations\HasMany::$person
I don't know if it makes a difference or not but I have no id field on my People table. person_id is the primary key.

Answer 1

It should be simple, once you have accessed the cast...
Route::get('movies', function()
{
$movie = Movie::find(1);
$cast = $movie->cast;
return View::make('movies')->with(array(
'movie' => $movie,
'cast' => $cast));
});
Note: at this point, $cast is an instance of the Collection class, not a single object of the MovieCast class, as the
relationship is defined with hasMany()
you can iterate over it in the View (in my case /app/views/movies.blade.php
#foreach($cast as $cast_member)
<p>{{ $cast_member->person->name }}</p>
#endforeach
Class definitions used for testing:
class Movie extends Eloquent {
protected $primaryKey = 'movie_id';
protected $table = 'movie';
public $timestamps = false;
// Relationships
public function cast()
{
return $this->hasMany('MovieCast', 'movie_id');
}
}
class MovieCast extends Eloquent {
protected $table = 'movie_cast';
public $timestamps = false;
public function person()
{
return $this->hasOne('Person', 'person_id');
}
}
class Person extends Eloquent {
protected $primaryKey = 'person_id';
protected $table = 'people';
public $timestamps = false;
public function movieCast()
{
return $this->belongsTo('MovieCast', 'person_id');
}
}