Multiple left joins in laravel eloquent

Question

I am trying to understand left joining in eloquent, but I really cant get it to work.

My regular SQL looks as following:

SELECT uploads.id, comments.file_id, comments.comment, users.id, comments.user, users.name
FROM uploads
LEFT JOIN comments
ON uploads.id=comments.file_id
LEFT JOIN users
ON users.id=comments.user;

Can someone please help me to convert this to a working eloquent query? And maybe provide some info how its done?

Thank you! :D

Solution

Eloquent doesn't perform SQL join, but simulate it with a lot of queries.

You will get what you want doing this:

Uploads::with('commments','users')
    ->get(['id','comments.file_id',' comments.comment', 'users.id', 'comments.user', 'users.name']);

Using this, you need to explict have the relations in your models. Check the docs.

Another way is with Query Builder. You are NOT using Eloquent doing this, but will work, of course:

DB::table('uploads')
    ->select('uploads.id','comments.file_id',' comments.comment', 'users.id', 'comments.user', 'users.name')
    ->leftJoin('comments','uploads.id','=','comments.file_id')
    ->leftJoin('users','users.id','=','comments.user')
    ->get();