Laravel query scopes

Have you ever found yourself writing out multiple queries to retrieve specific data sets from your Laravel database? If so, you're not alone. These repetitive queries can be time-consuming and inefficient. But fear not, Laravel Eloquent Query Scopes are here to save the day!

Eloquent Query Scopes allow you to define reusable queries that can be easily applied to any Eloquent query builder. This means that you can write the query once and use it anywhere in your application.

But how exactly do Query Scopes work? It's quite simple, really. First, you define a query scope method on your model. This method should return an instance of the query builder, typically with some additional filtering applied. Once the method is defined, you can call it on any Eloquent query builder using the "with" keyword.

For example, let's say you have a "posts" table with a "published" column. You can define a query scope method called "published" that filters the results to only include published posts.

public function scopePublished($query)
{
    return $query->whereNotNull('published_at');
}

Now, you can easily apply this query scope to any Eloquent query builder. For example:

$publishedPosts = Post::published()->get();

This will retrieve all published posts from the "posts" table.

But that's not all - you can also chain multiple query scopes together to create complex queries. For example, let's say you also want to retrieve only the posts that were published within the last week. You can define another query scope method called "recent" and chain it with the "published" query scope.

public function scopeRecent($query)
{
    return $query->where('published_at', '>=', Carbon::now()->subWeek());
}

Then, you can call both query scopes on the Eloquent query builder:

$recentPublishedPosts = Post::published()->recent()->get();

This will retrieve all published posts that were published within the last week.

Query scopes are an absolute game-changer when it comes to Eloquent queries. They allow you to define reusable queries that are easy to understand and even easier to use. So why not start implementing them in your Laravel application today?