Running a Query

How to execute a custom query you created with the query builder.

Executing queries

Any query can be executed by calling the executeQuery method on a repository. The return value will depend on the type of query - a select query will return one or more entities, but insert, update, and delete queries will return the number of database records that were affected by the query.

$query = QueryBuilder::create()
    ->select('firstName', 'lastName')
    ->from(Contact::class)
    ->where('lastName', '=', 'Skywalker')
    ->buildSelectQuery();
    
$contacts = $repository->executeQuery($query);

// $contacts now contains a list of partially
// hydrated Contact objects for each matching
// contact.

$query = QueryBuilder::create()
    ->delete(Contact::class)
    ->where('isPermanent', '=', false)
    ->buildDeleteQuery();
    
$affectedCount = $repository->executeQuery($query);

// $affectedCount now contains the count of how
// many records were deleted.

Queries with find methods

In addition to executeQuery, you can pass a select query to any of the find methods on a repository (instead of an array of criteria). This allows you to do things like call findValuesBy and get an indexed array back instead of entities.

$query = QueryBuilder::create()
    ->select('firstName')
    ->from(Contact::class)
    ->where('lastName', '=', 'Skywalker')
    ->buildSelectQuery();
    
$contacts = $repository->findValuesBy($query);

// $contacts now contains:
// ['Luke', 'Anakin']

Or get an associative array:

$repository->setConfigOption(ConfigOptions::BIND_TO_ENTITIES, false);
$query = QueryBuilder::create()
    ->select('firstName', 'lastName')
    ->from(Contact::class)
    ->where('lastName', '=', 'Skywalker')
    ->buildSelectQuery();
    
$contacts = $repository->findBy($query);

// $contacts now contains:
// [
//    ['firstName' => 'Luke', 'lastName' => 'Skywalker'],
//    ['firstName' => 'Anakin', 'lastName' => 'Skywalker']
// ]