Can same-table eager loads be combined in Laravel 4? - php

Question

I have a model where I'm eager-loading two references to another table (in this case posts.created_by_id == users.id and posts.updated_by_id == users.id).
class Post {
protected $table = 'posts';
public function scopeLatest() {
return $query->with(['created_by', 'updated_by'])
->orderBy('created_at', 'desc');
}
public function createdBy() {
return $this->belongsTo('User');
}
public function updatedBy() {
return $this->belongsTo('User');
}
}
class User {
protected $table = 'users';
public function posts() {
return $this->hasMany('Post', 'created_by');
}
}
This results in something like the following queries:
SELECT * FROM tbl ORDER BY created_at DESC;
SELECT * FROM users WHERE id IN (?); (created_at)
SELECT * FROM users WHERE id IN (?); (updated_at)
This makes sense - we're loading all of the referenced records in created_by, and then updated_by - however we could optimise this to combine the ids make a single query to users.
My question is: is this something Eloquent currently supports?

Answer 1

Didn't work for me. It seems that the eager load works for only one instance of the table. For me only one of the relationships has been filled. Eloquent probably uses the the table name as a pointer for the eager load. It generates all the eager load queries but only one will be filled.
I had to separate the data into different tables just because of this problem (and haven't had the time to dig that deep into Eloquent code.)

Answer 2

I think this is what you might be looking for:
class Post {
protected $table = 'posts';
public function scopeLatest($query) {
return $query->with('createdBy', 'updatedBy')
->orderBy('created_at', 'desc');
}
public function createdBy() {
return $this->belongsTo('User','created_by_id');
}
public function updatedBy() {
return $this->belongsTo('User','updated_by_id');
}
}
class User {
protected $table = 'users';
public function postsCreated() {
return $this->hasMany('Post', 'created_by_id');
}
public function postsUpdated() {
return $this->hasMany('Post', 'updated_by_id');
}
}