Laravel 4.2 - Eloquent WHERE clause with OR and reverse parameters - php

Question

I have Eloquent statement in Laravel 4.2 that looks like this
$user_message_block = Message::where('responder_id', '=', Auth::user()->id)
->where('user_id', '=', $user->id)->first();
Then if $user_message_block doesn't exist I also have to check for a reverse case scenario and I do it like this...
if(!$user_message_block){
$user_message_block = Message::where('responder_id', '=', Auth::user()->id)
->where('user_id', '=', $user->id)->first();
}
What I really would like to do is run a single query that checks for both scenarios at once..
In pseudo expression I need something like this:
$user_message_block = Message::where('responder_id', '=', Auth::user()->id,
'AND', 'user_id', '=', $user->id,
'OR', 'responder_id', '=', $user->id,
'AND', 'user_id', '=', Auth::user()->id)->first();
So basically I need to
SELECT Message where (responder_id=x AND user_id=y) OR where (responder_id=y AND user_id=x)
How could I do this using Eloquent. I am unable to find more about OR and AND statements used with Eloquent.
Thanks!
UPDATE:
After more looking I found that this seems to work (still testing a lot)
$user_message_block =
Message::where(['responder_id' => Auth::user()->id, 'user_id' => $user->id])
->orWhere(['user_id' => Auth::user()->id, 'responder_id' => $user->id])
->first();
OR
$user_message_block =
Message::where(['responder_id' => Auth::user()->id, 'user_id' => $user->id])
->orWhere(['user_id' => Auth::user()->id, 'responder_id' => $user->id])
->get();
Are there any drawbacks to this that I need to consider?

Answer 1

It may be very complicated to do in Eloquent but this does exactly what you need using Laravel's query builder without reverting to raw SQL.
DB::table('messages')
->where(function($query)
{
$query->where('responder_id', '=', 'x')
->where('user_id', '=', 'y');
})
->orWhere(function($query) {
$query->where('responder_id', '=', 'y')
->where('user_id', '=', 'x');
})
->get();
This is what I get from running a toSql() on it:
select * from `messages` where (`responder_id` = ? and `user_id` = ?) or (`responder_id` = ? and `user_id` = ?)
Try this to see if it works with Eloquent.
Message::where(function($query) {
$query->where('responder_id', '=', 'x')
->where('user_id', '=', 'y');
})->orWhere(function($query) {
$query->where('responder_id', '=', 'y')
->where('user_id', '=', 'x');
})->get();
It should work.

Answer 2

I credited Noah for the solution on account of providing a working solution and the effort he made in helping me out. I did end up using a different solution however..
$user_message_block =
Message::where(['responder_id' => 'x', 'user_id' => 'y'])
->orWhere(['user_id' => 'x', 'responder_id' => 'y'])
->get();
In my speciffic case I only need the first record found so this works for me
$user_message_block =
Message::where(['responder_id' => 'x', 'user_id' => 'y'])
->orWhere(['user_id' => 'x', 'responder_id' => 'y'])
->first();
Suffice it to say,, I found a solution similar to mine in phpacademy videos by Alex. And I stumbled upon this too Laravel eloquent SQL query with OR and AND with where clause