Eloquent many-to-many-to-many - how to load distant relation easily

Question

I have 3 tables; users, groups and permissions

In models I have the relationships set as belongsToMany in user model:

public function groups() {
            


        

Answer 1

This is how you can do it:

User::where('id', $id)->with(['groups.permissions' => function ($q) use (&$permissions) {
     $permissions = $q->get()->unique();
}])->first();

// then
$permissions; // collection of unique permissions of the user with id = $id

Answer 2

It should look something like this if you are eager loading...

$user = User::where('id', $id)->with(['groups.permissions'])->first();