Dynamic Relationship Loading in Laravel

Last updated on February 23rd, 2025 by Harris Raftopoulos

Laravel's loadMissing method provides a flexible way to eager load relationships on existing models or collections. This approach prevents N+1 query problems while allowing you to load relationships only when necessary.

This feature is particularly valuable when building APIs with optional includes or dashboards where different sections require different relationship data.

$post->loadMissing(['comments', 'author']);
// With constraints
$post->loadMissing(['comments' => function($query) {
    $query->latest()->take(5);
}]);

Here's an example of a dashboard data loader:

<?php
 
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
 
use App\Models\Dashboard;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
 
class DashboardController extends Controller
{
    public function show(Request $request, Dashboard $dashboard)
    {
        // Load base relationships
        $dashboard->loadMissing([
            'widgets',
            'owner',
        ]);
 
        // Conditionally load additional data
        if ($request->section === 'analytics') {
            $dashboard->loadMissing([
                'widgets.viewHistory' => function($query) {
                    $query->whereBetween('viewed_at', [
                        now()->subDays(30),
                        now()
                    ]);
                },
                'widgets.interactions'
            ]);
        }
 
        if ($request->section === 'sharing') {
            $dashboard->loadMissing([
                'sharedUsers',
                'shareLinks' => function($query) {
                    $query->where('expires_at', '>', now());
                }
            ]);
        }
        return $dashboard;
    }
}

The loadMissing method intelligently loads only the required relationships:

// GET /dashboard/1?section=analytics
{
    "id": 1,
    "name": "Sales Overview",
    "widgets": [
        {
            "id": 1,
            "type": "chart",
            "viewHistory": [
                {
                    "viewed_at": "2024-02-01T10:30:00Z",
                    "views": 150
                }
            ],
            "interactions": [
                {
                    "type": "filter_change",
                    "timestamp": "2024-02-01T11:20:00Z"
                }
            ]
        }
    ]
}