Laravel: How to get Models out of query results? - php

Question

Suppose I have a query that, among other things, returns user id's, this query was built using DB::table()... rather than using the models, so, as a result, I got a collection with arrays for each retrieved row, something like this:
user_id | calculated_data
--------+----------------
1 | 123
2 | 111
3 | 222
... | ...
Supose I store this collection on a $data variable, of course if I do a foreach ($data as $d) { $d->user_id ... } will work.
But I want this query to return something more like what the ORM does, so instead user_ids, return User models so I can do, for example, a $data->user->name
Can this be even done? if so, how?

Answer 1

You can use the hydrate() function, it accepts an array of stdClass objects (or even associative arrays AFAIR) as input and returns a collection of Eloquent Models, so you can do things like this:
$result = DB::table('users')->take(10)->get();
$users = App\User::hydrate($result->all());
You can even get a collection of Eloquent Models directly from a RAW query with the fromQuery() function, i.e.:
$users = App\User::fromQuery('SELECT * FROM users WHERE id > ?', [2])
Update: If in your collection you don't have all the fields to hydrate a model, you can preload all the users you need with one query and modify your collection, i.e.:
$users = App\User::find($data->pluck('user_id'));
$data->transform(function($item) use($users) {
$item->user = $users->where('id', $item->user_id)->first()
return $item;
});

Answer 2

You need to use Eloquent to call value the "ORM way" I did not find anything related to the query builder in relation to ORM.
You could do something like this:
$flights = App\Flight::all();
foreach ($flights as $flight) {
echo $flight->name;
}
And in the ORM way you would get the user like this:
foreach ($flights as $flight) {
echo $flight->user->name;
}
Of course you would need to setup the correct relations.

Answer 3

// initial query will return collection of objects
$query = DB::table('user_something')
->join('users', 'users.id', 'user_something.user_id');
// You could cast it to the model query, by using fromSub.
// Make sure to alias a subquery same as the model's name,
// otherwise it would not be able to parse models data
User::fromSub($query, 'users');
// The most robust way is to get table name from the model
User::fromSub($query, User::make()->getTable());