Fix the N+1 Problem with Eager Loading in Laravel Application

M. Najmul
2 min readJun 14, 2024

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Photo by Pavel Neznanov on Unsplash

In Laravel, a common performance issue is the N+1 query problem. This happens when your application makes too many database queries, slowing things down. Eager loading is a simple way to fix this by loading related data in a single query.

What is Eager Loading?

Eager loading helps you fetch all related models with the main model using the with method. This reduces the number of queries, making your application faster.

Example:

Imagine you have a list of books, and each book has an author. Without eager loading, you might run one query to get the books and another query for each book to get the author. This can quickly add up to many queries.

Here’s how you can use eager loading to optimize this:

// Fetch books with their authors
$books = App\Models\Book::with('author')->get();

foreach ($books as $book) {
echo $book->title;
echo $book->author->name;
}

Benefits:

  1. Fewer Queries: Fetch related models in one go, reducing the number of database queries.
  2. Better Performance: Less database load means faster response times.
  3. Cleaner Code: More efficient and easier-to-read code.

Best Practice:

Use eager loading when you need related models. This is especially useful when displaying data from multiple related tables, like in views or reports.

Example with Multiple Relationships:

You can also eager load multiple relationships:

// Fetch books with their authors and reviews
$books = App\Models\Book::with(['author', 'reviews'])->get();

foreach ($books as $book) {
echo $book->title;
echo $book->author->name;

foreach ($book->reviews as $review) {
echo $review->content;
}
}

By using eager loading in your Laravel projects, you can improve performance and make your application run more smoothly. Look for N+1 query issues in your code and optimize them with eager loading for a better, faster experience.

Happy coding!

https://www.linkedin.com/in/md-najmul-mollah-41920ab9/

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M. Najmul

Senior Software Engineer, Next Ventures | Problem Solver