Laravel’s Eloquent makes it feel almost magical to move data in and out of your database. Under the hood, that magic is powered by the Active Record pattern, that's a straightforward way to treat a database row as a first-class PHP object with built-in CRUD behaviour.  In this article I'll explain what the Active Record pattern is, its pros and cons and we will build a tiny implementation of it in plain PHP for you to understand better the mechanics behind Eloquent.

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The Active Record pattern treats database rows as objects with built-in CRUD behavior, which powers Laravel's Eloquent ORM. The pattern offers fast productivity and readable queries but can lead to coupled business logic and fat models. The article demonstrates how Active Record works by building a minimal PHP implementation from scratch, showing the mechanics behind Eloquent's magic including attribute hydration, dirty checking, and persistence methods.

Understanding Laravel Eloquent's Active Record Pattern

<p>The usage is exactly the same as you would use out the box Eloquent?</p>
