Get users with who I'm talking-CodePudding

I'm working on a small project (Internal Messaging System) using Laravel, I would like to get a list of users with who I'm talking.

I have 2 Models, User, Message

This is my Message Schema :

Schema::create('messages', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->increments('id');

            $table->unsignedBigInteger('sender_id');
            $table->unsignedBigInteger('receiver_id');

            $table->foreign('sender_id')->references('id')->on('users');
            $table->foreign('receiver_id')->references('id')->on('users');

            $table->text('message')->nullable();
            $table->timestamps();
        });

I would like to fetch a list of users with who I'm talking ( who contacted me first or who I contacted first ) Just like Facebook Inbox, Left side you see always people who contacted you or who you contacted first

Thank you

CodePudding user response：

If we look at the situation from user's perspective, I guess it makes sense if the relationship is considered as one to many:

Message Model

public function user()
{
    return $this->belongsTo(User::class);
}

User Model

public function user_chats()
{
    return $this->hasMany(Message::class);
}

I (the user) have multiple messages and every message belongs to me (the user).

CodePudding user response：

Assuming your relationship is defined correctly, you should be able to call this to get what you need:

auth()->user()->user_chats->unique()

->user_chats or ->user_chats()->get() (same code, one is a shortcut) will return a Collection, and you can call any Collection method on it, like unique() to filter out duplicates:

https://laravel.com/docs/8.x/collections#method-unique