Get user like for each post

Question

I have a feature that lets users "like" a post (similar to Facebook). When I retrieve a post (or multiple posts), I need to include data in that query about whether or not the user liked that post.

In my Post.php model, I have the following relationship:

public function likes()
{
    return $this->hasMany('App\Like');
}

Now, obviously, if I do the following query, it will retrieve all likes from all users, and not just the user logged in:

$posts = Post::with('likes')
    ->get();

So my question is, how can I create a relationship (maybe called userLike()) that would first check if the user is logged in, and then retrieve the like record for each post?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I assume that likes tables has user_id. In this case, you can use eager loading constraint like this:

$posts = Post::with([['likes' => function ($q) {
    $q->where('user_id', auth()->id());
}])->get();

Alternatively, you could create a relationship with where clause:

public function userLikes()
{
    return $this->hasMany(Like::class)->where('user_id', auth()->id());
}

And then use it:

Post::with('userLikes')->get();