In the course "Eloquent Performance Patterns" by Jonathan Reinink I've seen him calling query() method on his Eloquent models before writing the actual query. Let me give an example:
User::query()
->with('company')
->paginate()
As far as I know, he could write:
User::with('company')
->paginate()
I've seen this practice over and over in his course. It raised a question in my head: Is there any benefit in doing so or is it just a personal preference?
There is no difference, you don't have to add query(). It was practical to instantiate the query for the cases similar to this;
$user = User::query();
if (true) { // check some condition and append query condition(s)
$user->with('company');
}
return $user->paginate();
but then when method came and it became easier to do that;
return User::query()
->when(true, function (Builder $builder) {
$builder->with('company');
})
->paginate();