Conditional (when helper) gives back Eloquent Builder instance inside the closure instead of the relationship instance

[christian-nielsen]

Laravel Version

11.28.1

PHP Version

8.3

Database Driver & Version

No response

Description

Inside the when closure you will not get a relationship instance, so any specific relationship function will not be available.

Expected: $query to be BelongsToMany instance

Actual: $query is a Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder instance

Ex. BelongsToMany relationships, here you will not be able to call the wherePivot*-methods.

return MyModel::find(2)
->someRelationship()
->when(true, function($query) {
        logger($query::class); // Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder

        $query->wherePivotBetween('updated_at', ['2000-05-05', '2024-05-05']); 
    return $query;
})->get();

Steps To Reproduce

Create a model any kind of relationship and and fire a query that uses the relationship. Like in the example above.

[rodrigopedra]

As a workaround, the Eloquent Builder returned is the one being built by the Relation instance, not the parent's query builder (as the Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Relations\Relation class uses the Illuminate\Support\Traits\ForwardsCalls trait).

So you can use this call in the meanwhile:

return MyModel::find(2)
    ->someRelationship()
    // replace "pivot" by the pivot table's name, 
    // in case you are using a custom name
    ->when(true, fn ($query) => $query->whereBetween('pivot.updated_at', ['2000-05-05', '2024-05-05']))
    ->get();

You can try sending a PR, adding the Illuminate\Support\Traits\Conditionable trait to the Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Relations\Relation class.

[marius-mcp]

@rodrigopedra then that trait will be included in relation twice. Once in the relation and once in the Eloquent Builder...

[rodrigopedra]

@marius-mcp how come?

The Relation class does not extend the Builder class.

And the Illuminate\Support\Traits\ForwardsCalls trait would only forward to the Builder class calls to methods not found in the Relation class.

Adding the trait to Relation won't forward when calls to the Builder instance. And as it is not a subclass, there is also no conflict.

[marius-mcp]

@rodrigopedra you are right.

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[crynobone]

While this may seem like a bug, developers may already use the method and the current behavior. Please send it to master branch

[marius-mcp]

@rodrigopedra I think also https://github.com/laravel/framework/blob/11.x/src/Illuminate/Database/Query/Builder.php the query builder should have that trait. So, Relation, Eloquent Builder and Query Builder because of the forwards call to. The reason is that on callbacks the instance of the query can be Relation, Eloquent Builder and Query Builder.