In Laravel, which Eloquent methods return data and which return objects?

Question

I'm getting confused with the various functions in Laravel's Eloquent ORM and what they return. I have a Post model for a blog - if I write any of the following then I get back an array of all the posts:

$posts = Post::all();
$posts = Post::get();
$posts = Post::with('user')->all();

However, if I chain some other methods, it doesn't work. For example this gives an Unhandled Exception error: "Method [all] is not defined on the Query class."

$posts = Post::with('user')->order_by('updated_at', 'desc')->all();

And if I use the paginate function, I don't get an array of results at all.

$posts = Post::with('user')->order_by('updated_at', 'desc')->paginate(5);

// index.blade.php
@foreach ($posts as $post)
    {{ $post->id }}
@endforeach

I get the error: "Trying to get property of non-object". Turns out the data is in $posts->results, not $posts.

This is all very confusing! How do I get my head around this? What do each of these functions return and how do I chain them correctly?

Answer 1

Without going through every single method available the simple answer is to figure out what data type the output is.

dd($whatever);

If it's an object then find the class that the object is an instance of and understand how that class works.

If it's a query object, you can chain it, if it's an array or null you can't. If it's an instance of a model class then you CAN chain it, but you can only call methods that exist in the model class or in your derivative class.

Here's a brief article that I write about Eloquent and Fluent that may be helpful as well: http://laravel.io/topic/17/what-are-fluent-and-eloquent

Answer 2

When I run this:

$user = User::where('email','=','[email protected]');
dd($user); # object(Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder)

// After: 
dd($user->get()); # object(Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection)

// And finally, to get model object:
dd($user->get()->first()); # object(App\User)