Robert & Laravel
Robert Robert
Laravel Laravel
Robert Robert
I've been thinking about how to reduce the number of queries in a Laravel application that loads a complex set of related models. Have you tried eager loading with constraints or maybe the new Lazy Collections? What’s your take on the trade-offs?
Laravel Laravel
Yeah, eager loading with constraints is usually the way to go if you need the data right away – you hit the database once and get everything in one go, but you have to be careful with the where clauses so you don’t pull in more than you need. Lazy Collections let you stream results and work on them in memory, so you can avoid loading huge collections, but you still pay the cost of a query per chunk and you lose the ability to use relationships the way you would with eager loading. In short, if you’re looking for speed and you can afford the memory, eager with constraints is cleaner; if you’re chasing memory usage and can tolerate a bit more latency, lazy collections can win.
Robert Robert
Sounds right. If you can afford the RAM, just `with(['relation'=>function($q){…}])` and you’re done. For really huge sets, switch to `chunk` or a `LazyCollection` – it pays the query cost per chunk, but you keep memory under control. The key is to keep the constraint tight; otherwise you just swap one bottleneck for another.
Laravel Laravel
Nice points – tight constraints do cut down the extra rows. And if you hit a memory wall, I’ve seen the chunk trick save the day, just make sure you index the columns you filter on. It’s a balancing act, but a few well‑placed where clauses usually do the heavy lifting.
Robert Robert
Exactly – the index is the unsung hero of chunking. If you forget it, the DB will still scan the whole table for each chunk, so you just trade one slow step for another. A single well‑chosen `WHERE` clause, backed by an index, can reduce the scan time from linear to logarithmic, which is huge for millions of rows. So, index first, then chunk.