Laravel Illegal operator and value combination on where clause - laravel

Question

There are more than 10 controllers in my project. They all have the same code, only the table names are different.
Exactly 2 of these controllers have a problem with the shared host that is 'Illegal operator and value combination'. Surprisingly other controllers works without making such a mistake.
Maybe I overlooked something.
That's where the 'Illegal operator and value combination' problem comes from.
$tarifs = DB::table('tarifs as tarif')
->join('companies as comp', 'tarif.company_id','=', 'comp.id')
->join('categories as cats', 'tarif.catid', '=', 'cats.id')
->where('tarif.company_id', '<', env('COMKEY'))
->get(['tarif.*', 'comp.name', 'comp.photo as cimage','cats.cat_uz']);
Showing this line as an error ->where('tarif.company_id', '<', env('COMKEY'))
This one works without errors.
$minutes = DB::table('minutes as minute')
->join('companies as comp', 'minute.company_id','=', 'comp.id')
->join('categories as cats', 'minute.catid', '=', 'cats.id')
->where('minute.company_id', '<', env('COMKEY'))
->get(['minute.*', 'comp.name', 'cats.cat_uz']);
The project is running normally and without errors on localhost.
Shared and local php versions are the same 7.4

Answer 1

When env('COMKEY') returns the null you will get this error:
InvalidArgumentException with message 'Illegal operator and value combination.'
Code:
$minutes = DB::table('tarifs as tarif')
->join('companies as comp', 'tarif.company_id','=', 'comp.id')
->join('categories as cats', 'tarif.catid', '=', 'cats.id')
->when($comKey,function($query) use ($comKey){
logger()->info('Comkey value is not null',[
'comKey'=> $comKey
]);
return $query->where('tarif.company_id', '<', env('COMKEY'));
},function($query) use ($comKey){
logger()->info('Comkey value is null');
return $query;
})
->dd();
Please use the above query to debug your query.
If the value is returned from env the log will be something like
Comkey value is not null {"comKey":"RandomKey"}
If the value is returned from env the log will be something like:
Comkey value is null