With function not working to load has many relation data laravel Model Eloquent

Question

I have these two model. This phone model is a common model which can be used to save and fetch the phone value for a user, customer, Employee and so on. So the meta_value is used to save the id of related model and meta_key is used to determine the model name relation.

/* Customer Model*/
namespace App;    
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\SoftDeletes;

class Customer extends Model {
    /**
     * Get the Phone List.
     */
    public function phones(){
        return $this->hasMany('App\Phone','meta_value', 'id')
                    ->select('id as phone_id','contact_number as phone','contact_number','country_code','type','dial_code')
                    ->where('meta_key','customer');
    }
}
/* Phone Model*/
namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\SoftDeletes;


class Phone extends Model {
    /**
     * Get the customer that owns the phone.
     */
    public function customer(){
        return $this->belongsTo('App\Customer', 'meta_value');
    }
}

I can't get the data of phones with customer data. It always returns

[relations:protected] => Array
    (
        [phones] => Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection Object
            (
                [items:protected] => Array
                    (
                    )

            )

    )

In My controller I do the following code.

/*This is the case when I want to get the data for a single customer.*/
        $customer = Customer::find('448')->with('phones')->get();
        print_r($customer); // It will return all customers with no phones value.

        $customer = Customer::find('448');
        print_r($customer);die; // It will return a single customer whose id is 448 with no phones value.

        print_r($customer->phones);die; // I can get the values of phones by this

        $customer = Customer::find('448')->with('phones');
        print_r($customer);die; // It will crash my postman when i hit this.

        /*This is the case when I want to get the data for multiple customers.*/
        $customers = Customer::where('id', '>', '447')->with('phones')->get();
        print_r($customers);die; // It will return multiple customer with empty phones value.

        // However when I iterate through the loop and get phones then I can get the phone value. 
        $customers = Customer::where('id', '>', '447')->get();
        foreach ($customers as $customer) {
            $customer->phones = $customer->phones;
        }
        print_r($customers);die;

Only the iteration is working but I think that is not a good solution. Even I try load function but not working.

Answer 1

You have to select the required foreign key column meta_value:

->select('id as phone_id','contact_number as phone','contact_number','country_code',
    'type','dial_code','meta_value')

For a single customer you don't need eager loading:

$customer = Customer::find(448);
$phones = $customer->phones;

It also looks like you should use polymorphic relationships.