Laravel distinct on join results not working in query builder - laravel

Question

I have a posts table that has join query with 4 other tables. 3 of them are one to one relations but the 4th is one to many. I want the query to return only 1 row for each post. What i am trying so far is like this-
$query = DB::table('posts')
->select('posts.*',
'subcategories.subcategory_title_en',
'subcategories.subcategory_title_bn',
'categories.category_title_en',
'categories.category_title_bn',
'users.*',
'postimages.postimage_thumbnail'
)
->join('subcategories', 'subcategories.subcategory_id', '=', 'posts.subcategory_id')
->join('categories', 'categories.category_id', '=', 'subcategories.parent_category_id')
->join('users', 'users.id', '=', 'posts.user_id')
->join('postimages', 'postimages.post_id', '=', 'posts.post_id');
$query->groupBy('posts.post_id');
echo $query->count();
exit();
I have currently 50 posts in database, but the query returns all rows for each postimages, more than 1 row for each post that is. I thought distinct would only show each post_id once? What am i missing here?
I would prefer if someone tells me how to do this with query builder. As this will have a lot of searching on different columns and i want it to be as fast as possible.
This is a simpler version -
$query = DB::table('posts')
->select('posts.*','postimages.postimage_thumbnail')
->join('postimages', 'postimages.post_id', '=', 'posts.post_id')
->groupBy('posts.post_id');
echo $query->count();
exit();
The strange thing is the SQL query that is shown by laravel " select posts.*, postimages.postimage_thumbnail from posts inner join postimages on postimages.post_id = posts.post_id group by posts.post_id" works fine in mysql

Answer 1

You should use groupby
Try this code
$query = DB::table('posts')
->select('posts.*',
'subcategories.subcategory_title_en',
'subcategories.subcategory_title_bn',
'categories.category_title_en',
'categories.category_title_bn',
'users.*',
'postimages.postimage_thumbnail'
)
->join('subcategories', 'subcategories.subcategory_id', '=', 'posts.subcategory_id')
->join('categories', 'categories.category_id', '=', 'subcategories.parent_category_id')
->join('users', 'users.id', '=', 'posts.user_id')
->join('postimages', 'postimages.post_id', '=', 'posts.post_id')->groupBy('posts.post_id');
In config/database.php at "mysql" change : 'strict' => true, to false