Workflow of Laravel Eloquent ORM behind the scenes

Laravel Eloquent ORM is an Active Record implementation that abstracts SQL operations into expressive PHP syntax using models. Behind every Eloquent call, Laravel translates your methods into raw SQL using a layered structure of classes.

🔁 Eloquent Internal Workflow

When you call an Eloquent method (e.g., User::where(...)->first()), Laravel processes it through these core steps:

1. Model Instantiation:
Laravel bootstraps your model (e.g., User extends Model) and applies traits (like HasAttributes, HasRelationships, etc.).

2. Query Builder Initialization:
The newQuery() method returns an instance of Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder, which wraps the core Illuminate\Database\Query\Builder.

3. SQL Compilation:
Query Builder methods like ->where() or ->with() are chained and eventually converted into raw SQL by the toSql() method.

4. Database Connection & Execution:
Laravel uses DB::connection() and PDO to execute the query.

5. Hydration into Models:
The raw database rows are converted (hydrated) into fully functional Eloquent model instances.

6. Model Events & Mutators:
Laravel triggers lifecycle events like retrieved, saving, etc., and applies accessors/mutators if defined.

🧪 Example 1: Query Builder

$user = User::where('email', '[e-mail]')->first();

💡 Behind the scenes:

SELECT * FROM users WHERE email = '[e-mail]' LIMIT 1;

Laravel executes this, then hydrates the result into a User object.

🧪 Example 2: hasOne Relationship

// app/Models/User.php
public function profile()
{
    return $this->hasOne(Profile::class);
}

// On Controller
$user = User::find(1);
$profile = $user->profile; // Auto-fetches from DB

🔍 Internally:

SELECT * FROM profiles WHERE user_id = 1 LIMIT 1;

Laravel hydrates the result into a Profile model and attaches it to the $user object.

🧪 Example 3: belongsTo Relationship

// app/Models/Profile.php
public function user()
{
    return $this->belongsTo(User::class);
}

// On controller
$profile = Profile::find(10);
$user = $profile->user;

🔍 Internally:

SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = [profile.user_id] LIMIT 1;

Again, Laravel hydrates the User result and associates it with the Profile instance.

✅ Key Takeaways:

• Eloquent sits on top of Laravel's Query Builder and PDO.
• Relationships like hasOne and belongsTo internally generate foreign key–based queries.
• Eloquent uses hydration, events, and casting to make model objects fully interactive.
• Under the hood, it’s still structured SQL, just with expressive syntax and clean abstraction.