Find User in Laravel by Username

Question

So typically if you have access to the id of a user in laravel you can run User::find($id), however say you don't have access to the user's id and only their username. Is there a better way than using DB::query to locate the user?

This is my current solution and was wondering if someone possibly knew a better way.

$user_id = DB::table('users')->where('username', $user_input)->first()->id;

Answer 1

Yes, even better using the model. just like this

User::where('username','John') -> first();
// or use like 
User::where('username','like','%John%') -> first();
User::where('username','like','%John') -> first();
User::where('username','like','Jo%') -> first();

Answer 2

It depends. If a user is logged in you can have any information you want by:

$field = Auth::user()->field;

But if they are not logged in and you just want their user_id you can use:

$user_id = User::select('id')->where('username', $username)->first();