Laravel. Get single column values of a table using Query Builder

Question

I have a table named "items" and an input for the where condition named "ref_code".

$items = DB::table('items')
             ->where('ref_code','=', $request->ref_code)
             ->get(['id', 'ref_code', 'name','price']);

But I can't seem to take the values of each column.

I checked wether the query builder worked or not by using:

return $items;

Fortunately, there's no problem.

But returning or getting a single value doesn't work with:

return $items->id

Is my syntax wrong? All of this are inside my controller.

EDIT: I tried

dd($items);

before returning and it showed me this:

  Collection {#325 ▼
  #items: array:1 [▼
    0 => {#322 ▶}
  ]
}

Answer 1

Thanks for updating your question with the result. Look at your debug result. it looks like

array:1 [▼
    0 => {#322 ▶}
  ]

That means your query returning a collection of arrays because of you're using get() method. so get() method always return a collection of an array.

For avoiding this problem you have to use first() method instead of get(). Remember: all the time you have to use first() method when you want to get a single row.

So your query should be like :

$items = DB::table('items')
             ->select('id', 'ref_code', 'name', 'price')
             ->where('ref_code','=', $request->ref_code)
             ->first();

Or

$item = YourModelName::select('id', 'ref_code', 'name', 'price')
             ->where('ref_code','=', $request->ref_code)
             ->first();

And finally get output as like $item->id, $item->ref_code etc.

Hope it will help.

References: https://laravel.com/docs/5.4/queries#retrieving-results

Answer 2

get() would return a collection

$items = DB::table('items')
         ->where('ref_code','=', $request->ref_code)
         ->get(['id', 'ref_code', 'name','price']);

In the above case $items would be a collection, hence you need to loop through the collection to access the properties

foreach ($items as $item) {
    $item->price;
}

If you'd need to return a Model instance you could use the method first() instead

$items = DB::table('items')
             ->select('id', 'ref_code', 'name', 'price')
             ->where('ref_code','=', $request->ref_code)
             ->first();

and access the properties as

$items->price;