greetings!

so, i want to get X random models from a parent:

i have sub-categories and they have many products:

• subcat 1: N products
• subcat 2: N products
• subcat 3: N products
• etc.

i can do SubCategory::with('products')->get() and i will have a collection of subcats and their products.

however i want to get only a certain number of products per subcategory, after reading some documentation i came up with this:

$var = SubCategory::with(['products' => function($query){
  // $query(get X random products...); <- this is what i want
}])->get();

// like so:
$var = SubCategory::with(['products' => function($query){
  $query->random()->take(3);
}])->get();

// random() is just a scope.

which works except it only gets ONLY X products in the total, not per subcategory:

• subcat 1: 3 products
• subcat 2: 0 products
• subcat 3: 0 products

i want:

• subcat 1: 3 products
• subcat 2: 3 products
• subcat 3: 3 products

after struggling with this problem i did this solution:

$subCats  = SubCategory::all();
$productsCollection = collect();

foreach ($subCats as $cat) {
  $productsCollection->push($cat->products()->random()->take(3)->get());
}

that works as i want to, however i'm pretty sure there's a better and elegant solution.

any help/advice is much appreciated, thanks for reading!