👀 Views: 197 💬 Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-09-06

Laravel CTE refactoring SQL

I'm prototyping a solution and I'm stuck trying to I'm working on a project and hit a roadblock. This might be a silly question, but Currently developing a Laravel application where I need to refactor several SQL queries for better readability and performance. The project utilizes Eloquent ORM, but some complex queries are still written in raw SQL. I want to implement Common Table Expressions (CTEs) to simplify these queries. Here's a specific example: I have a raw SQL query that retrieves user orders along with the total amount per user: ```sql SELECT u.id AS user_id, u.name, SUM(o.amount) AS total_amount FROM users u JOIN orders o ON u.id = o.user_id GROUP BY u.id, u.name; ``` While this works, it feels clunky and harder to maintain. I attempted to rewrite it using a CTE, like this: ```sql WITH UserOrders AS ( SELECT user_id, SUM(amount) AS total_amount FROM orders GROUP BY user_id ) SELECT u.id AS user_id, u.name, uo.total_amount FROM users u LEFT JOIN UserOrders uo ON u.id = uo.user_id; ``` The query runs fine, but I’m curious about two things: first, is this the best use of CTEs in Laravel, or should I stick to raw SQL for performance? Second, how can I further improve the readability and efficiency of this query? I read somewhere that using CTEs might have performance implications based on the database configuration or query complexity. Any insights on best practices for using CTEs in Laravel or examples of more complex refactoring would be greatly appreciated! Additionally, if there are any pitfalls to avoid when moving to CTEs from raw queries, I’d love to hear about those as well. My development environment is Windows. I'm working on a CLI tool that needs to handle this. What am I doing wrong? I'm coming from a different tech stack and learning Sql. Is this even possible?