**Course Title:** Mastering Laravel Framework: Building Scalable Modern Web Applications **Section Title:** Working with Databases and Eloquent ORM **Topic:** Using Laravel's Eloquent ORM for database interactions. ### Overview of Eloquent ORM in Laravel Eloquent is Laravel's simple and elegant Active Record implementation for working with the database. It provides a beautiful, simple syntax for interacting with the database, allowing you to perform common database operations without writing raw SQL. Eloquent is an Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) system that encapsulates the database logic and allows you to define your database tables as classes. Each Eloquent model serves as a blueprint for your database table, providing an easy and intuitive way to interact with the database. ### Defining Eloquent Models In Laravel, each Eloquent model is typically stored in the `app/Models` directory. To create a new Eloquent model, you can use the following command: ```bash php artisan make:model Post ``` This will create a new file `app/Models/Post.php` containing the basic structure of an Eloquent model: ```php // app/Models/Post.php namespace App\Models; use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model; class Post extends Model { // } ``` ### Eloquent Model Conventions Laravel follows some conventions when it comes to Eloquent models: * The model's class name should be singular and in PascalCase (e.g., `Post`, `User`, `Product`). * The table name associated with the model is the plural form of the model's class name (e.g., `posts`, `users`, `products`). * The primary key column is assumed to be `id` by default. ### Retrieving Data from the Database You can use various methods to retrieve data from the database using Eloquent. Here are some examples: * `all()`: Retrieves all records from the database table. ```php $posts = Post::all(); ``` * `find()` and `findOrFail()`: Retrieve a single record by its primary key. If no record is found, `find()` returns `null`, while `findOrFail()` throws a `ModelNotFoundException`. ```php $post = Post::find(1); $post = Post::findOrFail(1); ``` * `get()`: Retrieves a collection of records from the database table. ```php $posts = Post::where('title', 'like', '% Laravel %')->get(); ``` ### Inserting, Updating, and Deleting Data You can use the following methods to insert, update, and delete data in the database: * `create()`: Inserts a new record into the database table. ```php $post = Post::create(['title' => 'New Post', 'content' => 'This is the content of the new post.']); ``` * `update()`: Updates an existing record in the database table. ```php $post = Post::find(1); $post->update(['title' => 'Updated Post']); ``` * `delete()`: Deletes a record from the database table. ```php $post = Post::find(1); $post->delete(); ``` ### Eloquent Collections When you retrieve multiple records from the database using Eloquent, the results are returned as an `Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection` instance. This collection provides various methods for working with the data, such as `each()`, `map()`, `filter()`, and more. ```php $posts = Post::all(); $posts->each(function ($post) { echo $post->title . "<br>"; }); ``` For more information on Eloquent ORM, you can refer to the official [Laravel documentation on Eloquent](https://laravel.com/docs/8.x/eloquent). **Next Topic:** Understanding relationships in Eloquent (one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many). We've reached the end of this topic. If you have any questions or need further clarification, please feel free to leave a comment below.