What is Eloquent?
Eloquent is Laravel's built-in ORM (Object-Relational Mapper). It provides a beautiful, simple ActiveRecord implementation for working with your database.
Each database table has a corresponding "Model" which is used to interact with that table. Models allow you to query for data in your tables, as well as insert new records into the table.
Key Features of Eloquent
Eloquent offers several powerful features:
- Intuitive query building
- Relationships between models
- Eager loading to solve N+1 query problems
- Model events and observers
- Attribute casting
- Scopes for reusable queries
Learning to use Eloquent effectively can significantly speed up your development process and make your code more maintainable.