Laravel whereIn OR whereIn

Stefan Izdrail

Founder & Senior Architect · 2026-06-29

Laravel Company
Title: Understanding Differences Between Laravel whereIn and OR whereIn When Working with Search Filters Body: When building an application that requires advanced search functionalities, you may encounter situations requiring complex filters. For example, when dealing with products, you might need to apply multiple conditions simultaneously using both AND and OR statements. In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the differences between Laravel's `whereIn` and `orWhereIn`, which can help you choose the appropriate solution for your application's search requirements. As demonstrated in your code example, you have tried to build a query that involves applying an AND condition with multiple filters for product values. However, it seems that your intended logic was based on an OR condition instead, where one of the conditions should be satisfied for the result to return true. To achieve this goal, Laravel provides two methods: `whereIn` and `orWhereIn`. The `whereIn()` method is used when you want to apply an AND condition with multiple filters. It allows you to search your database using one or more columns and comparing their values against a list of values. Here's how the code should look like for your desired result:
->where(function($query) use($filter) {
  if(!empty($filter)){
    foreach ($filter as $key => $value) {           
      $f = explode(",", $value);        
      $query-> whereIn('products.value', $f);
    }       
  }
})
The above code block defines a function that accepts the query object and your filter array as parameters. It then iterates through each element in the filter array, explodes the values into an array separated by commas, and calls `whereIn()` to apply the AND condition on all product values in the list. Since you're dealing with both Bomann and PHILIPS products and considering only red or white products, this approach would yield results that satisfy all conditions at once. In contrast, the `orWhereIn()` method is used when you want to apply an OR condition with multiple filters. This method allows you to search your database by using one or more columns and comparing their values against a list of values. If any of these conditions are satisfied, the query will return true. Let's see how it would be implemented for the desired result:
->where(function($query) use($filter) {
  if(!empty($filter)){
    foreach ($filter as $key => $value) {           
      $f = explode(",", $value);        
      $query-> whereIn('products.value', $f)->orWhere(function($q1) use($filter) {
        foreach ($filter as $k => $v) {
          if(!empty($v)){
            $q1->where('products.value', 'in', explode(",", $v));
          }
        })
    }       
  }
})
This code block implements the same structure as the previous example, but instead of using `whereIn()`, it uses `orWhere()` and iterates through each element in the filter array. When a product value matches any condition from either of the two loops, the query will return true, satisfying your desired OR logic between the product values and colors. To summarize, the main difference between Laravel's `whereIn()` and `orWhereIn()` lies in their ability to handle AND or OR conditions when searching databases with multiple filters. `whereIn()` is for AND operations, while `orWhereIn()` is for OR operations. By following the example code provided, you can achieve your desired search results based on these principles and adapt them to other scenarios within your Laravel application.