Efficiently retrieving Eloquent Model records by ID

It is commonplace in Laravel to retrieve a collection of model records based on a list of ID, like when working with search engines such as Algolia or Elasticsearch, which return an array of record IDs ordered by relevance. But how do you efficiently retrieve the actual record data from your database using these IDs? Let's go through best approaches to querying your model and retrieving records by ID in Laravel.

Imagine you're building a blog platform, and you need to display a list of articles that match the user's search query. Your search engine returns an array of article IDs, but you need to retrieve the actual article data, including titles, authors, and publication dates. To achieve this, you need to query your model to retrieve the records corresponding to these IDs. You might be familiar with the find() method, which retrieves a single record by ID, but what about retrieving multiple records at once?

Understanding findMany()

When you need to retrieve multiple records by ID, the findMany() method is your best friend. It allows you to pass an array of IDs and returns a collection of corresponding model instances. Here's an example:

$ids = [1, 2, 3];
$models = Model::findMany($ids);

Under the hood, findMany() uses the whereIn() method to retrieve the records if you provide an array as argument. This means you can achieve the same result using whereIn() directly:

$ids = [1, 2, 3];
$models = Model::whereIn('id', $ids)->get();

I prefer using findMany() when I need to retrieve records by ID, as it's more concise and readable. However, whereIn() provides more flexibility, allowing you to specify additional query constraints.

Using find() with an Array of IDs

Interestingly, you can also pass an array of IDs to the find() method, which will internally call findMany():

$ids = [1, 2, 3];
$models = Model::find($ids);

Conclusion

We've explored the best approaches to retrieving model records by ID in Laravel. By leveraging find(), findMany(), and even the underlying whereIn(), you can efficiently retrieve records corresponding to a list of IDs. Remember to consider performance implications and optimize your queries accordingly. You may also check out the official Laravel documentation to see other Eloquent features for optimizing your database queries and improving application performance.