How do I send DB results to a view that requires a nested loop through different DB Tables?

Hi John-hubler,

This should be solved by setting up the appropriate relationships, so if you have your food model setup like this:

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class FoodItems extends Model
{
    //
		public function categories(){
		    $this->belongsToMany('App\Category');
		}
}

Then inside of your controller you could do something like this:

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use App\Category;
use App\FoodItem;

class FoodController extends Model
{
    public function index(){
		    $food_items = FoodItem::orderBy('category_id')->get();
				return view('display_food', compact('food_items');
		}
}

Finally inside of your view named display_food.blade.php you could have the following HTML:

<div id="food">
    <?php $current_category = ''; ?>
	  @foreach($food_items as $food)
	      @if($food->category()->name != $current_category)
			<h4>{{ $food->category()->name }}:</h4>
			<?php $current_category = $food->category()->name; ?>
		@endif
		
		<p>{{ $food->name }}</p>
	  
	  @endforeach
</div>

So, in your view you will list out each food item and if the category has changed you will display the new category before listing out the food items.

Hope this helps. I haven't tested all the code but this should be enough to point you in the right direction :)

Thanks! TTYS

Thank you for responding.

I am unfortunately, still struggling here.

To be as thorough as possible, here is everything that I have:

First, I have two database tables set up. The first is called "foodItems" and the second is called "foodCategories".

The foodItems table has the following columns: id, uniqueID, categoryID, clientID, itemName, itemDescription, itemAlias, thumbURL, itemSize, itemCost, itemPrice, isTaxable, hasSizes, hasDescriptors, status, created_at, updated_at

The foodCategories table has the following columns: id, uniqueID, clientID, categoryName, categoryAlias, status, created_at, updated_at

Next, I have two models, FoodItem, and FoodCategory.

The code I have in my FoodItem model looks like so: <?php

    namespace App;

    use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

     class FoodItem extends Model {
            protected $table = 'foodItems';

          public function foodCategory(){
                 return $this->belongsTo('App\FoodCategory');
            }
     }

The code in my FoodCategory model looks like so:

<?php
    namespace App;

    use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

    class FoodCategory extends Model {
        protected $table = 'foodCategories';

        public function foodItem() {
	            return $this->hasMany('App\FoodItem');
        }
    }

The code in my controller looks like this:

<?php
    namespace App\Http\Controllers;

    use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Auth;
    use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;
    use Illuminate\Http\Request;
    use App\FoodCategory;
    use App\FoodItem;

    class DashboardController extends Controller {

        public function __construct(){
            $this->middleware('auth');
        }

        public function food() {
            $food_items = FoodItem::orderBy('categoryID')->get();
            return view('food', compact('food_items'));
        }
    }

And finally, the code I have in my View (food.blade.php) is:

@foreach ($food_items as $food)
					<li>{{ $food->foodCategory->categoryName }}</li>
	@endforeach
	

In my view, I have tried using parenthesees after "foodCategory", I have tried changing the capitalization to "FoodCategory", "FoodCategory()", "foodCategories()", "foodCategories"... and about every other combination I can think of - but nothing seems to work.

As the code is right now, it produces the following error:

"Trying to get property of non-object (View: /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/htdocs/Laravel/ChanceSystems2017/resources/views/food.blade.php)"

I'm really stumped at this point. Could anybody please shed some light onto what I am missing? Thank you!

In your controller use

$food_items = FoodItem::with('foodCategory')orderBy('categoryID')->get();