Quicktip: How to display morphTo relation into list columns

The use case

When using a morphTo relationship type in WinterCMS, you can't display the relation data inside the columns of a ListController, that is not supported yet:

// models/ForumDiscussion.php
public $morphTo = [
    'author' => []
];

// models//forumdiscussion/columns.yaml
author_name:
    label: Author name
    relation: author
    select: name

The work around

A simple workaround which will work for most of the cases is to use an accessor:

// models/ForumDiscussion.php
public $morphTo = [
    'author' => []
];

public function getAuthorNameAttribute()
{
    return $this->author->name;
}

// models//forumdiscussion/columns.yaml
author_name:
    label: Author name

Additionally, to avoid n+1 issue, you should add into the listExtendQuery method of the controller the relation eager-load:

// controllers/ForumDiscussions.php
public function listExtendQuery($query)
{
    return $query->with('author');
}

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