How to have relationship in Laravel 5.7 based on a json data key saved in a table column? - json

Question

I am using this Staudenmein package in Laravel and referring to this answer given by the package owner himself.
I have two tables, pets and notifications with models Pet and Notification.
The notifications table has a column called data which is of JSON dataType and stores JSON data
{"pet_id":"4","pet_type_id":1,"lost_report_id":3,"pet_sighting_id":21,"latitude":"22.676846","longitude":"88.338509"}
The key pet_id denotes the id column of the pets table. I need a relationship so that I can fetch the name of the pet from pets table.
By referring to the answer link given above, I wrote my Notification model like this:-
namespace App\Models;
use DB, App, Auth, Hash, Lang, Mail, Config, Exception, Validator, Globals;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use \Staudenmeir\EloquentJsonRelations\HasJsonRelationships;
use App\User;
use App\Models\AdminConfig;
use App\Models\ReceivedAppNotification;
class Notification extends Model
{
protected $casts = [
'data' => 'json'
];
public function notificationPet()
{
return $this->belongsTo('App\Models\Pet', 'data->pet_id');
}
}
When I am running the query like this:-
$notificationQuery = Notification::with('notificationPet')
->whereRaw("FIND_IN_SET('$userId', in_app_notification_receiver)")
->where(array(
'status' => Globals::SMALL_CHAR_ACTIVE,
'is_delete' => Globals::SMALL_CHAR_NO,
))->get()->toArray();
I get the notificationPet relationship as empty, ie. the data-set is like this:-
Array
(
[id] => 10
[title] =>
[message] =>
[data] => Array
(
[pet_id] => 4
[latitude] => 22.676846
[longitude] => 88.338509
[pet_type_id] => 1
[lost_report_id] => 3
[pet_sighting_id] => 34
)
[no_of_in_app_notification_receiver] => 2
[no_of_push_notification_receiver] => 1
[from_user] => 22
[in_app_notification_receiver] => 2,23
[push_notification_receiver] => 2
[status] => a
[is_delete] => n
[push_notification_sent] => n
[created_date] => 2020-03-19 13:23:17
[modified_date] => 2020-03-19 13:23:17
[created_at] => 2020-03-19 13:23:17
[updated_at] => 2020-03-19 13:23:17
[notification_pet] =>
)
However, I have a record in pets table with id = 4, already. So the relationship should not be empty.
What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Change:
protected $casts = [
'data' => 'json'
];
To:
protected $casts = [
'data' => 'array'
];