Question

I have a query to select all the rows from the hire table and display them in a random order.

DB::table('hire_bikes')->order_by(\DB::raw('RAND()'))->get();

I now want to be able to put

concat(SUBSTRING_INDEX(description, " ",25), "...") AS description

into the SELECT part of the query, so that I can select * from the table and a shortened description.

I know this is possible by running a raw query, but I was hoping to be able to do this using Fluent or at least partial Fluent (like above).

How can I do it?

Answer 1

You can do this by adding a DB::raw() to a select an array in your fluent query. I tested this locally and it works fine.

DB::table('hire_bikes')
  ->select(
      array(
        'title',
        'url',
        'image',
        DB::raw('concat(SUBSTRING_INDEX(description, " ",25),"...") AS description'),
        'category'
      )
    )
  ->order_by(\DB::raw('RAND()'))
  ->get();