Why Your Laravel Relationship Returns an Integer (and How to Fix It)

Infinitypaul
3 min readNov 29, 2024

--

Photo by Mohammad Rahmani on Unsplash

If you’ve ever used Laravel’s Eloquent ORM, you know how great it is , until something weird happens. I recently faced a confusing issue where I was expecting a relationship to give me a User, but instead, it just gave me a number! After two days of scratching my head, I finally figured out what went wrong.

Sometimes, no matter how senior you are, little issues like this can humble you. So whether you’re here because you’re facing the same problem or your search landed you here, let me save you some time. Here’s what happened, why it happens, and how to fix it. Let’s dive in!”

The Setup: How It All Started

To explain this, let’s create a situation where the bug might happen. Imagine you’re building a task management app where users can share tasks with others. You create a table for shared tasks, and here’s what the migration looks like:

Schema::create('shared_tasks', function (Blueprint $table) {
$table->id();
$table->unsignedBigInteger('invitee'); // This points to the user being invited
$table->unsignedBigInteger('task_id'); // This points to the task being shared
$table->timestamps();
});

So far, so good, right? We’re just setting up the shared_tasks table with an invitee column, which will store the ID of the invited user.

Adding the Relationship

Next, we add the relationship in our SharedTask model so we can easily fetch the details of the invited user:

public function invitee(): \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Relations\BelongsTo
{
return $this->belongsTo(User::class, 'invitee');
}

This seems straightforward, you’re telling Laravel that the invitee column is linked to the id column in the users table.

The Bug That Makes You Question Everything

When you try to use the relationship, you expect something like this:

$sharedTask = SharedTask::with('invitee')->first();
dd($sharedTask->invitee);

But instead of getting a User object, you just get the integer value from the invitee column! And if you try to access properties like $sharedTask->invitee->id, you’ll get an error like:

"Attempt to read property 'id' on int"

At this point, you might be thinking, “What’s going on? Did I mess up the relationship? Is Laravel broken?”

Why This Happens

Here’s the deal: Laravel prioritizes the column name over the relationship name. Since your column is named invitee and your relationship is also named invitee, Laravel assumes you’re asking for the column value when you write $sharedTask->invitee.

It’s like having two people in a room with the same name you call one, but they both respond and now you’re confused!

The Fix That Saves Your Sanity

The solution is simpler than you think: rename the relationship method to avoid the conflict. Here’s how you fix it:

public function inviteeUser(): \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Relations\BelongsTo
{
return $this->belongsTo(User::class, 'invitee');
}

By changing the method name to inviteeUser, you’re telling Laravel, “Hey, this is different from the column.” Now, when you access $sharedTask->inviteeUser, Laravel correctly resolves it to the User model.

Testing the Fix

After making this change, try fetching the relationship again:

$sharedTask = SharedTask::with('inviteeUser')->first();
dd($sharedTask->inviteeUser);

You should now get the expected User object, and all is well in the world again.

Bugs like this might seem small, but they can eat up hours (or even days) of your time if you don’t know what’s causing them. Here is some simple rules to keep in mind so you don’t fall into this trap

When defining relationships in Laravel, ensure the relationship name isn’t the same as any column in the table.

Free

Distraction-free reading. No ads.

Organize your knowledge with lists and highlights.

Tell your story. Find your audience.

Membership

Read member-only stories

Support writers you read most

Earn money for your writing

Listen to audio narrations

Read offline with the Medium app

--

--

Infinitypaul
Infinitypaul

Written by Infinitypaul

Software Developer — I admire breaking up complex problems into understandable and sizeable bits, solving daily challenges with technology

Responses (1)

What are your thoughts?