Eloquent Many to Many

Why would the bookings and user share the id ?

Anyways. You just want the first booking ?

$booking = App\Models\User::find($id)->bookings()->first();
$booking->rooms;

Let's break this statement in pieces:

$booking = App\Models\User::find($id)->bookings->where('id', $id);

First step

App\Models\User::find($id)

User::find() will execute a query in the users table and return a User instance.

So up here you will have a User object

Second step

App\Models\User::find($id)->bookings

You are now asking Laravel to execute a query and retrieve all bookings belonging to the user.

Note you define this relationship as a method, but when we call it as a property, Laravel understands you want it to execute a query and return its results.

As the relation is a belongs to many, we end up with a Collection instance here.

Third step

App\Models\User::find($id)->bookings->where('id', $id)

Now you are calling the Collection@where method. This method filters down the collection, but the result is still a collection object, even if it has only an item.

https://laravel.com/docs/9.x/collections#method-where

Side note: I guess here you would want to use a different $id than the one used to find the user. Most probably you want a specific booking id.

Epilogue

So when calling

$booking->rooms;

Laravel errors out saying there is no rooms property on the collection object filtered in the last statement we broke down.

Solutions

You can use a different collection method to filter down to a single instance, both the following will do, but you can look at the docs on more:

$booking = App\Models\User::find($id)->bookings->where('id', $id)->first();

or

$booking = App\Models\User::find($id)->bookings->firstWhere('id', $id);

Hope this helps =)

Oh, sorry, I didn't realize I was replicating the same $id in the code snippet. What I meant to say is, if I query the booking directly from the Booking model, i can get the rooms. If i query the booking from the User model, then I cannot access the rooms. Like so:

$booking = App\Models\Booking::find($id); // Get a specific booking
$booking->rooms  // That works

$user = App\Models\User::find($id); // Get a specific user, associated with the booking 
$booking = $user->bookings->where('id', $id); // Get same booking as above, but from the user model
$booking->rooms  // That does not work

Hope that's clear.

Edit: Solved the problem with @rodrigo.pedra's answer. Thank you!