So typically if you have access to the id of a user in laravel you can run User::find($id), however say you don\'t have access to the user\'s id and only their username. Is
$user_id = DB::table('users')->where('username', $user_input)->first();
without "->id"
check here: http://laravel.com/docs/5.0/queries
Yes, even better using the model. just like this
User::where('username','John') -> first();
// or use like
User::where('username','like','%John%') -> first();
User::where('username','like','%John') -> first();
User::where('username','like','Jo%') -> first();
It depends. If a user is logged in you can have any information you want by:
$field = Auth::user()->field;
But if they are not logged in and you just want their user_id you can use:
$user_id = User::select('id')->where('username', $username)->first();