What is Eloquent ORM?

 Difficulty: Beginner → Intermediate

Interview Level: Junior → Senior

Eloquent is Laravel's ORM — Object-Relational Mapper.

It allows developers to work with database records using PHP models rather than writing every database operation manually in SQL.

For example:

$product = Product::find(10);

Instead of manually writing:

SELECT *
FROM products
WHERE id = 10;

Eloquent represents the database table through a model:

class Product extends Model
{
}

Then:

$product->name

can access a database attribute.

---

Creating records

$product = Product::create([
    'name' => 'Laptop',
    'price' => 75000,
]);

---

Updating

$product->update([
    'price' => 70000,
]);

---

Deleting

$product->delete();

---

Relationships

Suppose:

User
 ↓
Orders

The User model might contain:

public function orders()
{
    return $this->hasMany(Order::class);
}

Then:

$user->orders;

can retrieve the user's related orders.

This is one of Eloquent's most powerful features.