When obtaining relational data from a database, a typical performance problem known as the “n+1 problem” in Laravel might occur. When you need to retrieve a group of records from one database table and then you need to retrieve associated records for each record from another table, the database is queried more than once.
The “n+1” refers to the quantity of queries required to retrieve the data. For instance, if you have a collection of 10 records and each record needs a separate query to extract the data associated with it, you would ultimately run 11 queries (1 query to retrieve the collection and 10 queries to retrieve related data).
The Eager Loading feature in Laravel addresses this issue. Instead of running a separate query for each record, Eager Loading enables you to obtain all related records in one query. The associated data you wish to retrieve can be specified using the with() method, and Laravel will fetch it all at once.
Consider a User model that has a one-to-many relationship with a Post model, for instance.
Use the following code to fetch all users and any associated posts using eager loading:
$users = User::with('posts')->get();
Only two queries will be executed in this case: one to retrieve all users, and another to retrieve all posts that are associated to those users.
You can dramatically lower the amount of database queries that are run and enhance the efficiency of your application by utilising eager loading.