laravel-best-practiceslisted

# Laravel Best Practices Best practices for Laravel, prioritized by impact. Each rule teaches what to do and why. Verify exact API syntax against the installed Laravel version and available project documentation. ## Consistency First Before applying any rule, check what the application already does. Laravel offers multiple valid approaches — the best choice is the one the codebase already uses, even if another pattern would be theoretically better. Inconsistency is worse than a suboptimal pattern. Check sibling files, related controllers, models, or tests for established patterns. If one exists, follow it — don't introduce a second way. These rules are defaults for when no pattern exists yet, not overrides. ## Quick Reference ### 1. Database Performance → `rules/db-performance.md` - Eager load with `with()` to prevent N+1 queries - Enable `Model::preventLazyLoading()` in development - Select only needed columns, avoid `SELECT *` - `chunk()` / `chunkById()` for large datasets - Index columns used in `WHERE`, `ORDER BY`, `JOIN` - `withCount()` instead of loading relations to count - `cursor()` for memory-efficient read-only iteration - Never query in Blade templates ### 2. Advanced Query Patterns → `rules/advanced-queries.md` - `addSelect()` subqueries over eager-loading entire has-many for a single value - Dynamic relationships via subquery FK + `belongsTo` - Conditional aggregates (`CASE WHEN` in `selectRaw`) over multiple count queries - `setRelation()` to prevent c