Laravel spatie/laravel-activitylog - Call to undefined relationship [user] on model [Spatie\Activitylog\Models\Activity]

Question

I just updated my project's framework from Version 7 to Version 8 (the laravel's latest version as of this date). Everything works except for the activity logs that produces this error:

Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\RelationNotFoundException Call to undefined relationship [user] on model [Spatie\Activitylog\Models\Activity].

This error only appears after I updated laravel and all of composer dependencies including spatie/laravel-activitylog. I followed this instructions from laravel docs for steps in updating the project's framework (Upgrade Guide). I also checked the changelog of spatie/laravel-activitylog on github and the current latest version supports Laravel 8 (version 3.16.1 the same version I use on my project).

Here's my code for Spatie\Activitylog\Models\Activity class:

<?php

namespace Spatie\Activitylog\Models;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Relations\MorphTo;
use Illuminate\Support\Arr;
use Illuminate\Support\Collection;
use Spatie\Activitylog\Contracts\Activity as ActivityContract;

class Activity extends Model implements ActivityContract
{
public $guarded = [];

protected $casts = [
    'properties' => 'collection',
];

public function __construct(array $attributes = [])
{
    if (! isset($this->connection)) {
        $this->setConnection(config('activitylog.database_connection'));
    }

    if (! isset($this->table)) {
        $this->setTable(config('activitylog.table_name'));
    }

    parent::__construct($attributes);
}

public function subject(): MorphTo
{
    if (config('activitylog.subject_returns_soft_deleted_models')) {
        return $this->morphTo()->withTrashed();
    }

    return $this->morphTo();
}

public function causer(): MorphTo
{
    return $this->morphTo();
}

public function getExtraProperty(string $propertyName)
{
    return Arr::get($this->properties->toArray(), $propertyName);
}

public function changes(): Collection
{
    if (! $this->properties instanceof Collection) {
        return new Collection();
    }

    return $this->properties->only(['attributes', 'old']);
}

public function getChangesAttribute(): Collection
{
    return $this->changes();
}

public function scopeInLog(Builder $query, ...$logNames): Builder
{
    if (is_array($logNames[0])) {
        $logNames = $logNames[0];
    }

    return $query->whereIn('log_name', $logNames);
}

public function scopeCausedBy(Builder $query, Model $causer): Builder
{
    return $query
        ->where('causer_type', $causer->getMorphClass())
        ->where('causer_id', $causer->getKey());
}

public function scopeForSubject(Builder $query, Model $subject): Builder
{
    return $query
        ->where('subject_type', $subject->getMorphClass())
        ->where('subject_id', $subject->getKey());
}
}

And here's my code for User Model:

<?php

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Contracts\Auth\MustVerifyEmail;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;
use Illuminate\Notifications\Notifiable;
use Spatie\Activitylog\Traits\LogsActivity;
use Spatie\Permission\Traits\HasRoles;

class User extends Authenticatable
{
use Notifiable, LogsActivity, HasRoles; 

protected static $ignoreChangedAttributes = ['password', 'updated_at'];

protected $fillable = [
    'first_name', 'last_name', 'gender', 'birthdate', 'user_contact', 'status', 'email', 'password',
];

protected static $logAttributes = 
[
    'first_name', 'last_name', 'gender', 'birthdate', 'user_contact', 'status', 'email', 'password',
];

protected static $logOnlyDirty = true;
protected static $logName = 'User';

protected $hidden = [
    'password', 'remember_token',
];

protected $casts = [
    'email_verified_at' => 'datetime',
];

public function getDescriptionForEvent(string $eventName): string
{
    return "A user has been {$eventName}";
}
}

Where should I define the relationship and/or how exactly should I solve the error?

Answer 1

I managed to fix the problem. Recovered the old files of the project and compared the code from the old Activity.php to the currently updated Activity.php

Cause of the Problem: Updating of spatie package replaced the existing file by the new ones thus removing the defined relationship functions inside my Activity.php in Spatie\Activitylog\Models.

Solution: Define the relationship between the User model and Activity model inside the Activity.php:

public function user(){
    return $this->belongsTo('\App\User', 'causer_id'); //arg1 - Model, arg2 - foreign key
}