When building web applications, database interaction is one of the most critical components. Laravel, one of the most popular PHP frameworks, makes this task incredibly easy with its built-in Eloquent ORM (Object-Relational Mapping). Eloquent allows developers to interact with the database in a smooth, elegant and object-oriented way – no raw SQL needed!

What is Eloquent ORM ?
Eloquent is Laravel ‘s implementation of the Active Record pattern. It represents each table in your database as a Model class, and each row in the table as an instance of the model.

This means you can interact with your database like you’re working with regular PHP objects.

$user = User::find(1);
echo $user->name;

No SQL query written, and yet reading from your database.

Getting Started with Eloquent
You can create a model with:

php artisan make:model User

Then easily perform CRUD operations:

User::create(['name' => 'John']);
$user = User::find(1);
$user->update(['name' => 'Jane']);
$user->delete();

Relationships
Eloquent supports relationships like:
One to Many:

public function posts() {
  return $this->hasMany(Post::class);
}

Belongs To:

public function user() {
  return $this->belongsTo(User::class);
}

Why Use It ?
Eloquent is:
Easy to use
Feature-rich
Great for clean, readable code.