You can use a so called "Query Scope" in your Contact Model, something like this:

http://laravel.com/docs/5.0/eloquent#query-scopes

<?php 

class Contact {
    
    /* Common model fields */
    
    /*
    * Query scope to get just primary contacts
    */
    public function scopePrimary($query)
    {
        return $query->where('is_primary', 1);
    }
}

Then in your view you can access it like this i think:

    $family->contacts->primary()->first_name

Thanks @uxweb I will try it and see if I can get anywhere. I am still trying to figure out where to put everything as it seems my controllers are starting to carry most of my code which I think is wrong.

Glad to help! @fluentd

I am not understanding why the following:

$contacts = Family::find(1)->contacts()->where('is_primary', '=', '1')->get()

works and returns a collection of contacts from the family ID of 1 but when I try to use the following and change find(1) to all() it does not work.

FatalErrorException in FamiliesController.php line 25:
Call to undefined method Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection::contacts()

$contacts = Family::all()->contacts()->where('is_primary', '=', '1')->get()

I have already pulled the latest families using:

$families = Family::latest('created_at')->get();

but now I would also like to get all the related contacts from those families and only display the ones where('is_primary', '=', '1') (I have yet to move that to a queryScope as I wanted to get it working first.

I am guessing the problem is with it being a collection? @uxweb or @blackbird

I changed my syntax to use Eager loading by using the following:

$families = Family::with('contacts')->get();

the following worked and is pulling all families and relationship of contacts for each, but now I am not really sure how to use the array of arrays to display data in my table where it has both family and contact information in the same row.