Source: https://wallpapers.com/ @tygernyte

Chain Your Laravel DB Queries for Cleaner, More Maintainable Code

I encountered some rough code a while back and realized I could clean it up by chaining Laravel DB queries. Basically, each query could piggyback off the last one, adding new conditions as needed.

They were separate and would look something like this:

$report = DB::table('reports')
          ->selet('id')
          ->whereNotNull('deleted_at');

$publishedReports = DB::table('reports')
          ->selet('id')
          ->whereNotNull('deleted_at')
          ->where('is_published', true);

$publishedReportsInMilan = DB::table('reports')
          ->selet('id')
          ->whereNotNull('deleted_at')
          ->where('is_published', true)
          ->where('publish_city', 'Milan');

I thought I could build Query A, Query B on Query A, and C on B. And then at the end run them all, easy, right?

It would’ve made the code look way prettier:

$report = DB::table('reports')
          ->selet('id')
          ->whereNotNull('deleted_at');

$publishedReports = $report->where('is_published', true);

$publishedReportsInMilan = $publishedReports
                            ->where('publish_city', 'Milan');

The seemingly elegant approach of chaining queries falls short. These chained queries reference the same underlying object, so adding conditions later doesn’t create separate queries.

To solve it, we can just clone the DB Query Object so we get rid of the reference issue:

$report = DB::table('reports')
          ->selet('id')
          ->whereNotNull('deleted_at');

$publishedReports = clone $report->where('is_published', true);

$publishedReportsInMilan = clone $publishedReports
                            ->where('publish_city', 'Milan');

This small step goes a long way in keeping your Laravel code clean and maintainable.

Happy querying!