GUIDES
Soft-deleted records vanish from normal queries by default — a specific set of methods (withTrashed, onlyTrashed, restore, forceDelete) is what's needed to actually see and manage them.
Naming a second connection is the easy part — it only actually gets used once a model or raw query explicitly references it by name, since Laravel otherwise always defaults to the one named in DB_CONNECTION.
count() returns just a number, while groupBy()+get() returns full grouped result sets — the two approaches solve genuinely different problems and shouldn't be reached for interchangeably.
The when() method for conditionally applying a clause only if a value is present is the one technique here that consistently eliminates the most repetitive if/else query-building boilerplate.
API Resources are the standard, framework-idiomatic way to control exactly what an endpoint's JSON looks like — a consistent envelope, renamed fields, and hidden internal columns.
Picking the wrong direction for a relationship — defining hasOne where belongsTo actually belongs — is the single most common beginner mistake, and it comes down to which table physically holds the foreign key.
A lost MySQL root password isn't actually unrecoverable — starting the server with --skip-grant-tables temporarily bypasses authentication entirely, just long enough to set a new one.
Every column operation beyond a fresh migration — adding, changing type, renaming, dropping, indexing — goes through doctrine/dbal for anything that modifies an existing column, not just creates one.
Eloquent's create() already returns the new model with its ID populated — reaching for a separate lastInsertId() call is really only needed with the raw query builder, not Eloquent.
