php - How to do a Left Outer join with Laravel?

Question

i want information from one table and if there is matched info from another table that as well.

this my code

 $scoreObject = DB::table('responses')
        ->select('responses.id', 'responses.questions_id', 'responses.answer_id', 'responses.open_answer', 'responses.user_id',  'responses.scan_id',
             'questions.question', 'questions.question_nr', 'questions.type', 'questions.totalsection_id',
            'answers.id as answerID', 'answers.answer', 'answers.questions_id', 'answers.points'
        )
        ->Join('answers as answers', 'responses.answer_id', '=', 'answers.id')
        ->Join('questions as questions', 'answers.questions_id', '=', 'questions.id')
        ->orderBy('questions.id', 'ASC')
        ->where('responses.scan_id', $scanid)
        ->where('responses.user_id', $userid)
        ->groupBy('questions.id')
        ->get();

It returns all responses that have matches with answers (answers.questions_id questions.id'). some responses don't have matched (because there is no responses.answer_id) but i still want the responses info then.

how can i get such a left outer join in laravel ?

Answer 1

You could try specifying the join as being a left outer join:

->join('answers as answers', 'responses.answer_id', '=', 'answers.id', 'left outer')

The fourth parameter of the join method is $type, which when not specified, defaults to the value inner. But since left join and left outer join are the same thing, you could just use the leftJoin method instead, to make it more readable:

->leftJoin('answers as answers', 'responses.answer_id', '=', 'answers.id')