Soft delete "count" warning Laravel 5.3 PHP 5.6

[mtvbrianking]

• Laravel Version: 5.3.* to 5.5.*
• PHP Version: 5.6.4 to 7.0.33
• Database Driver & Version: MySQL 5.0.12

Description:

Am developing a package and I need to support people still using lower Laravel versions.

But I run into this error;

PHP Warning: count(): Parameter must be an array or an object that implements Countable in C:\xampp\htdocs\laravel-53\vendor\laravel\framework\src\Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder.php on line 1231

Note: I understand this issue was resolved for PHP 7.2 #22858 and #20258 but is there a fix or workaround for lower PHP versions..!?

Upgrading to PHP 7.1 is impossible because different package users can opt for the lowest support PHP version.

Is there a way to override (in my model); callScope() for getDeletedAtColumn() is already fixed.

Steps To Reproduce:

{
    ...
    "require": {
        "php": ">=5.6.4",
        "laravel/framework": "5.3.*"
    },
    "config": {
        "platform": {
            "php": "5.6.4"
        }
    }
}

Simply fix your PHP version to the lowest acceptable.

App\User::count();

[driesvints]

I can't help you out for 5.3 & 5.4 since we don't support those anymore, sorry. Are you absolutely sure you're experiencing this on 5.5 as well? Because it seems to me that the prs you're linking to indicate that the problems were fixed for 5.5.

[mtvbrianking]

@driesvints update my testbed Laravel versions; I can confirm the issue is only persistent on only Laravel 5.3.

I created a new branch for my package to handle this breaking changes in Laravel 5.3