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rgoodmanFFE's avatar

Eloquent returns different results than MySQL Workbench query

I am building an analytics dashboard for my work. The user selects metrics on the front end that builds a query in Eloquent, that is then executed and results are spit out in an HTML table back on the front end.

This is the query in question, generated by Eloquent (where clauses changed for client privacy, we do not actually work with Google lol):

SELECT DISTINCT Week(display.date) AS date_granularity,
                `display`.`site`,
                `display`.`ad_unit`,
                Sum(display.revenue)
FROM   `display`
       INNER JOIN `traffic`
               ON `traffic`.`date` = `display`.`date`
WHERE  `display`.`date` BETWEEN '2022-05-29' AND '2022-06-14'
       AND ( `display`.`site` = 'Google' )
       AND ( `display`.`ad_unit` = 'ABC' )
GROUP  BY `date_granularity`,
          `display`.`site`,
          `display`.`ad_unit`

When I execute this query in MySQL workbench, I get nothing, indicating that the ABC ad unit does not run on Google's sites. If I change the site to a client of ours that does run the ABC ad unit, I get results.

The problem is, when I run this query using my app from the front end, I get results, where I assume I should not because the ABC ad unit does not run on Google's sites, according to MySQL Workbench.

Any idea why Eloquent might be returning different results? My gut tells me MySQL workbench is correct, because when I do

SELECT * FROM table WHERE site = 'Google'

and manually scroll through the results grid, I found no examples of the ABC ad unit on Google. I have also confirmed that both are connected to the same database.

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6 replies
click's avatar

Are you sure you are connecting to the same database and are you 100% sure you run the exact same query?

Is display.date a date field or a datetime field? Maybe it is a copy paste thing, but normally it should be wrapped in quotes: WHERE display.date BETWEEN '2022-05-29' AND '2022-06-14'

rgoodmanFFE's avatar

@click Thanks for your answer. I just tripled-checked, and I am still connected to the same database. 'date' is a date field. I surrounded the dates in quotes and same results all-round.

I acquired the query using

dd($query->toSql(), $query->getBindings());

The $query variable is built dynamically to accommodate for user selection, so my gut feeling is there is some quirk with the way I am building the query. There's a ton of edge cases to account for with this kind of stuff. I could post the function that builds it, but it is hundreds of lines of code long and would likely raise more questions than it answers. I am hoping there is some known issue/thing about how Eloquent processes things that can lead to a misunderstanding in the logic of the query, perhaps around the WHERE clause. I am stumped though obviously.

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