Laravel 4 Eager Loading "Undefined Property" - php

Question

Why can't I access the property in an eager loaded senario?
I am trying to access the photo location for my facilities model. They have a Many:Many relationship. When I load the facility info using
$facilities = Facility::with('photos')->get();
When I try to access
foreach($facilities as $facility)
{
echo $facility->photos->id;
}
I get the Undefined property: Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection::$id
If I echo $facilities->photos I end up with.
[{"id":"3",
"name":null,
"location":"facilities\/facility1.jpg\r",
"created_at":"2013-07-18 14:15:19",
"deleted_at":null,
"updated_at":null,
"pivot":{"facility_id":"5","photo_id":"3"}}]
Whats the best way to access any property in this array?

Answer 1

With eager loading the photos you get a photos collection and in order to get the photo you need to iterate through the photos collection e.g.
foreach($facilities as $facility)
{
foreach($facility->photos as $photo)
{
echo $photo->id;
}
}
If you only want just the first photo you can get it by calling the first() method on the collection
foreach($facilities as $facility)
{
$facility->photos->first()->id;
}

Answer 2

What is received from the database is an array with one object. This is why a foreach works. To access it the way you want you should add the first() method just as Atrim says, you can even drop the get() method. Only I would suggest doing it in the controller.
$facilities = Facility::with('photos')->first();
{{ $facilities->location }}

Answer 3

Thanks Altim, I just hit this problem too and the nested foreach is one of the solutions.
Nevertheless, I'll share with you guys the solution that I used at the end.
Instead of the nested foreach or even the eager loader, I used a Join Query Builder. In my case:
$posts = DB::table('posts')
->leftJoin('users', 'posts.user_id', '=', 'users.id')
->get();
This allowed me to use one foreach, and all the data is at the same level, in my case for instance would be something like:
#foreach ($posts as $post)
<p>{{ $post->first_name }}</p> # From users table
<p>{{ $post->title }}</p> # From posts table
<p>{{ $post->body }}</p>
#endforeach
Maybe it is not answering this question exactly , but hope it helps to others like me that ended up in this particular question.