How to add a property to an Eloquent model?

Question

Laravel

There are two related models Chat and Message. How to add a messageCount property to the Chat model that calculates the number of messages in the chat. You need to access the property directly in Chat, and not through Messages ($chat->messages->count()):

class Chat extends Model
{
  public function messages(){
    return $this->hasMany(Message::class);
  }
  public function messageCount(){
    return $this->messages()->count();
  }
}

When called , it $chat->messageCountthrows an error:

App\Chat::messageCount must return a relationship instance.

Answer 1

public function getMessageCountAttribute(){
    return $this->messages()->count();
}

Laravarl Accessors
Just keep in mind that the so-called. eager loading in this way will not work.