Building query with Query Builder or Eloquent in Laravel 4 - php

Question

I have a query that has multiple subqueries with parameters that I'm trying to build in a Laravel model.
I'm quite new to Laravel 4, so I'd really like some help with what is the "best" way to do this.
The Query that I need to reproduce is:
Select userId from facultyAvailability
where
:startDate between startDate and endDate
and :endDate between startDate and endDate
and userId NOT IN(
Select
userId
from
schedulerTrialSchedule
inner join `review`
on eventId=lectureId
where
trialId = :trialId
and (
startDate between :startDate and :endDate
or endDate between :startDate and :endDate
)
)
AND userId IN (
SELECT userId
from
faculty2FacultyCategory
where
categoryId in(:categoryIdList)
)
I'm really not sure what methods to chain together to build this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Well, after some trial and error, I think I arrived at the proper solution.
I am making use of Eloquent's Query Scope functionality. On the model in question, I've defined a scope as:
public function scopeAvailable($query, $trialId, UnscheduledEvent $event)
{
$query->whereRaw('? BETWEEN startDate AND endDate', array($event->startDate))
->whereRaw('? BETWEEN startDate AND endDate', array($event->endDate))
->whereIn(
'userId', function ($query) use ($trialId, $event) {
$query->select('userId')
->from('schedulerTrialSchedule')
->join('review', 'eventId', '=', 'lectureId')
->where('trialId','=',$trialId)
->where(
function ($query) use ($event) {
$query->whereBetween('startDate', array($event->startDate, $event->endDate))
->orWhereBetween('endDate', array($event->startDate, $event->endDate));
}
);
}
,'and',true);
return $query;
}
This scope yields a query that looks like:
select *
from `facultyAvailability`
where
? BETWEEN startDate AND endDate
and ? BETWEEN startDate AND endDate
and `userId` not in (
select `userId`
from `schedulerTrialSchedule`
inner join `review` on `eventId` = `lectureId`
where `trialId` = ?
and (`startDate` between ? and ? or `endDate` between ? and ?))
This is exactly what I needed it to be. I'm posting this here just for reference in case anyone else needs to know how to solve this problem.
I have to say that I'm quite impressed with Eloquent/Fluent's ability to cope do this without me having to resort to using a bunch of raw SQL. The only reason I had to use raw SQL at all is because whereBetween doesn't seem to be able to handle using a value instead of a column for the first argument of the between with columns as the second and third arguements i.e '2013-08-09' BETWEEN column1 AND column2