When to use Eloquent (ORM) over Fluent (Query Builder)? [closed]

Question

Maybe due to my Codeigniter background, I just don't find myself enjoying Laravel 4's Eloquent ORM a lot. Say I would like to write a query that order a list of posts by id, descending, how can Eloquent beat the clarity of DB::table('posts')->orderBy('id', 'desc')->get();?

Is there a good reason to use Eloquent over Fluent, was it mostly for joining tables?

Answer 1

I came from codeigniter also and this is my experience: I use Eloquent and Fluent usually together. Eloquent is a thing that allows you to work nicely with relations, CRUD operations etc. When you need to do some SQL operations you can easily add some fluent functions

In the example you mentioned above I see you have posts table. If you have a post model then the same thing written using Eloquent is:

Post::orderBy('id', 'desc')->get();

So as I get it if you extends Eloquent than

Model_name::some_functions

is the same as

DB::table('table_name')->some_functions

The real power comes when you need to create or update a model, or, for example, get post comments. Than it becomes easily:

$comments = Post::find($id)->comments;

So the answer is - you have to use fluent functions to get ordered list. You can use them both with DB::table('posts')->orderBy or Post::orderBy

Answer 2

Using models and Eloquent, you can also write custom functions in your model class for performing common operations like, say, outputting a couple concatenated fields.

for instance:

<?php
class User extends Eloquent {
    //Standard Relation Function
    public function posts() {
        return $this->hasMany('Post');
    }
    //Custom function
    public function fullname() {
        return $this->firstName.' '.$this->lastName;
    }
}

//Somewhere else in your code, if you need a users full name...
$user = User::find(3);
$name = $user->fullname();