Laravel Artisan Console Command Cannot Retrieve Model Collection - laravel-5

Question

I am trying to do some logic via a custom Console Command I created using Artisan but I am unable to use my model class and query using Eloquent.
When I use MyModel::all() it will return all records in a collection. This is great except the model I am using has too many records to load all of them into memory.
I am trying to use
MyModel::where('id',$currentLoopId)->get();
This returns an empty collection :(
My Console Class is as follows:
namespace App\Console\Commands;
use Illuminate\Console\Command;
use App\ProcessReferral;
use App\TargetUrl;
use App\Website;
class ProcessReferrals extends Command
{
/**
* The name and signature of the console command.
*
* #var string
*/
protected $signature = 'process:referrals';
/**
* The console command description.
*
* #var string
*/
protected $description = 'Process all outstanding records in process_referrals table';
protected $logArray = [];
/**
* Create a new command instance.
*
* #return void
*/
public function __construct()
{
parent::__construct();
}
/**
* Execute the console command.
*
* #return mixed
*/
public function handle()
{
$this->info('Start Processing Referrals');
$process_referrals = ProcessReferral::all();
$referral_count = count($process_referrals);
$this->info('Found '.$referral_count.' referral(s) that need processed');
foreach($process_referrals as $referral){
## 1. SEE IF REFERRAL WEBSITE IS ACTIVE AND VERIFIED IN AFFILIATE_WEBSITES. LOAD LAST FORCE UPDATE REFRESH CODES
########################################
$this->info('Processing Referral ID: '.$referral->id);
$this->info('Get Website from Affiliate Website Id: '.$referral->affiliate_website_id);
$websites = Website::where('id','=',$referral->affiliate_website_id)->get();
dd($websites);
... ( more Logic after I get website )
}
}
My Model Class is as follows:
namespace App;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
class Website extends Model
{
/**
* The table associated with the model.
*
* #var string
*/
protected $table = 'affiliate_websites';
/**
* The attributes that are mass assignable.
*
* #var array
*/
protected $fillable = [
...
];
... ( Eloquent Relations )
}
Database Table:
id website_label referrals
------------------------------
1 Google UK 920685
2 Google U.S. 2940884
3 Google Germany 709603
First Dummy Data Record being processed:
id affiliate_website_id
-------------------------
2 3
Output on Terminal
$ php artisan process:referrals
Start Processing Referrals
Found 300 referral(s) that need processed
Processing Referral ID: 2
Get Website from Affiliate Website Id: 3
Website(id->62) is Active.
Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection {#901
#items: []
}
I have tried a handful of different ways to query including DB::select() which returns what I am looking for but I cannot dynamically set the id I am searching for with that convention.
My Model works everywhere else in my application, I think there is some sort of Namespacing issue coming into play but I am at a complete loss as to why it wouldn't work.
Any help would be very appreciated!

Answer 1

As pointed out by #machuga on http://laravel.io/chat
I checked to see if the ID i was passing was an integer
$website = Website::where('id',(int)$referral->affiliate_website_id)->first();
Still had some issues but used ->first() to get a single record instead of ->get() so I dont have to loop over the Website collection