Laravel $query->toSql() loses relation extras - php

Question

I've got the below function, which attempts to match users on specific whitelisted fields, which works brilliantly, for small amounts of data, but in our production environment, we can have > 1 million user records, and Eloquent is (understandably) slow when creating models in: $query->get() at the end. I asked a question this morning about how to speed this up and the accepted answer was brilliant and worked a treat, the only problem now, is that the resulting query being sent to DB::select($query->toSql()... has lost all of the required extra relational information I need. So is there any way (keeping as much of the current function as possible), to add joins to DB::select so that I can maintain speed and not lose the relations, or will it require a complete re-write?
The recipients query should include relations for tags, contact details, contact preferences etc, but the resulting sql from $query->toSql() has no joins and only references the one table.
public function runForResultSet()
{
$params = [];
// Need to ensure that when criteria is empty - we don't run
if (count($this->segmentCriteria) <= 0) {
return;
}
$query = Recipient::with('recipientTags', 'contactDetails', 'contactPreferences', 'recipientTags.tagGroups');
foreach ($this->segmentCriteria as $criteria) {
$parts = explode('.', $criteria['field']);
$fieldObject = SegmentTableWhiteListFields::where('field', '=', $parts[1])->get();
foreach ($fieldObject as $whiteList) {
$params[0] = [$criteria->value];
$dateArgs = ((strtoupper($parts[1]) == "AGE" ? false : DatabaseHelper::processValue($criteria)));
if ($dateArgs != false) {
$query->whereRaw(
DatabaseHelper::generateOperationAsString(
$parts[1],
$criteria,
true
),
[$dateArgs['prepared_date']]
);
} else {
// Need to check for empty value as laravel's whereRaw will not run if the provided
// params are null/empty - In which case we need to use whereRaw without params.
if (!empty($criteria->value)) {
$query->whereRaw(
\DatabaseHelper::generateOperationAsString(
$parts[1],
$criteria
),
$params[0]
);
} else {
$query->whereRaw(
\DatabaseHelper::generateOperationAsString(
$parts[1],
$criteria
)
);
}
}
}
}
// Include any tag criteria
foreach ($this->segmentRecipientTagGroupCriteria as $criteria) {
$startTagLoopTime = microtime(true);
switch (strtoupper($criteria->operator)) {
// IF NULL check for no matching tags based on the tag group
case "IS NULL":
$query->whereHas(
'recipientTags',
function ($subQuery) use ($criteria) {
$subQuery->where('recipient_tag_group_id', $criteria->recipient_tag_group_id);
},
'=',
0
);
break;
// IF NOT NULL check for at least 1 matching tag based on the tag group
case "IS NOT NULL":
$query->whereHas(
'recipientTags',
function ($subQuery) use ($criteria) {
$subQuery->where('recipient_tag_group_id', $criteria->recipient_tag_group_id);
},
'>=',
1
);
break;
default:
$query->whereHas(
'recipientTags',
function ($subQuery) use ($criteria) {
$dateArgs = (DatabaseHelper::processValue($criteria));
$subQuery->where('recipient_tag_group_id', $criteria->recipient_tag_group_id);
if ($dateArgs != false) {
$subQuery->whereRaw(
DatabaseHelper::generateOperationAsString(
'name',
$criteria,
true
),
[$dateArgs['prepared_date']]
);
} else {
// Need to check for empty value as laravel's whereRaw will not run if the provided
// params are null/empty - In which case we need to use whereRaw without params.
if (!empty($criteria->value)) {
$subQuery->whereRaw(
\DatabaseHelper::generateOperationAsString(
'name',
$criteria
),
[$criteria->value]
);
} else {
$subQuery->whereRaw(
\DatabaseHelper::generateOperationAsString(
'name',
$criteria
)
);
}
}
},
'>=',
1
);
}
}
//$collection = $query->get(); // slow when dealing with > 25k rows
$collection = DB::select($query->toSql(), $query->getBindings()); // fast but loses joins / relations
// return the response
return \ApiResponse::respond($collection);
}

Answer 1

By lost relational information do you mean relations eagerly loaded the name of which you passed to with()?
This information was not lost, as it was never in the query. When you load relations like that, Eloquent runs separate SQL queries to fetch related objects for the objects from your main result set.
If you want columns from those relations to be in your result set, you need to explicitely add joins to your query. You can find information about how to do this in the documentation: https://laravel.com/docs/5.1/queries#joins