Laravel whereAny, whereAll, whereNone: multi-column search without the orWhere trap

Your search box needs to match name, email or phone. So you chain orWhere() three times, ship it, and a week later someone on team 1 searches “sam” and sees a contact from team 2. One missing closure turned your tenant filter into a suggestion. Laravel has had a one-call fix for this since 10.47, and most codebases still write the closure by hand.

What whereAny is and why most people miss it#

whereAny and whereAll arrived in Laravel 10.47 (March 5, 2024, PR #50344). whereNone followed in Laravel 11.19 (July 30, 2024, PR #52260). They apply one condition to a list of columns:

Contact::query()
    ->where('team_id', $teamId)
    ->whereAny(['name', 'email', 'phone'], 'like', "%{$search}%")
    ->get();

select * from "contacts"
where "team_id" = ? and ("name" like ? or "email" like ? or "phone" like ?)

Why people miss them: they shipped in point releases, not in a major version’s headline list. The docs section sits between “Where Not” and “JSON Where”, easy to scroll past. And every search tutorial (and every autocomplete trained on them) predates it, so the where(function ($q) { ... }) closure is pure muscle memory.

Under the hood it is a loop inside whereNested(): each column gets a where() joined with or (for whereAny) or and (for whereAll). whereNone is whereAny with not in front. The parentheses come from whereNested(), which is exactly the part people forget.

The usual way vs whereAny#

Both versions below produced the identical SQL string and bindings in our lab. One of them fits on a slide.

Contact::query()
    ->where('team_id', $teamId)
    ->where(function ($query) use ($search) {
        $query->where('name', 'like', "%{$search}%")
            ->orWhere('email', 'like', "%{$search}%")
            ->orWhere('phone', 'like', "%{$search}%");
    })
    ->get();

Contact::query()
    ->where('team_id', $teamId)
    ->whereAny(['name', 'email', 'phone'], 'like', "%{$search}%")
    ->get();

The closure version is correct. The trouble is the version people write when they are in a hurry, without the closure:

Contact::where('team_id', 1)
    ->where('name', 'like', '%sam%')
    ->orWhere('email', 'like', '%sam%') // not grouped
    ->get();

SQL evaluates and before or, so that reads as “(team 1 and name matches) or (any team’s email matches)”. In the lab, it returned Samir from team 1 and Sam from team 2. The whereAny version returned Samir only.

whereAll reads nicely for stock alerts. In the lab, this returned only the mug, the one product low in every region:

DB::table('stock')->whereAll(['eu', 'us', 'asia'], '<', 5)->pluck('sku'); // ['MUG']

Swap it for whereAny and you get every product low in at least one region (['MUG', 'TEE']).

Contact::whereAny([
    fn ($query) => $query->whereLike('name', $term),
    fn ($query) => $query->whereLike('email', $term),
])->get();

Real-world example: a team-scoped Inertia contacts search#

A CRM-style contacts page. The user types in one box; you match name, email or phone, never outside their team, and keep ?search= in the pagination links.

public function index(Request $request): Response
{
    $search = $request->string('search')->trim()->toString();

    return Inertia::render('Contacts/Index', [
        'contacts' => Contact::query()
            ->where('team_id', $request->user()->current_team_id)
            ->when($search !== '', fn ($query) => $query->whereAny(
                ['name', 'email', 'phone'], 'like', "%{$search}%"
            ))
            ->orderBy('name')
            ->paginate(15, ['id', 'name', 'email', 'phone'])
            ->withQueryString(),
        'filters' => ['search' => $search],
    ]);
}

We ran this controller logic in a Pest test with assertInertia: “sam” returned one team 1 contact, “+60” matched two phone numbers, an empty box returned the whole team, and first_page_url kept search=sam.

The Vue side sends the box value back with a short debounce. onWatcherCleanup clears the previous keystroke’s timer (our post on it has the full story):

<script setup lang="ts">
import { router } from '@inertiajs/vue3'
import { onWatcherCleanup, ref, watch } from 'vue'

const props = defineProps<{
    contacts: { data: { id: number; name: string; email: string; phone: string | null }[] }
    filters: { search: string }
}>()

const search = ref(props.filters.search)

watch(search, (value) => {
    const timer = setTimeout(() => {
        router.get('/contacts', { search: value || undefined }, {
            preserveState: true,
            preserveScroll: true,
            replace: true,
            only: ['contacts', 'filters'],
        })
    }, 300)
    onWatcherCleanup(() => clearTimeout(timer))
})
</script>

<template>
    <input v-model="search" type="search" placeholder="Name, email or phone" />
    <ul>
        <li v-for="contact in contacts.data" :key="contact.id">{{ contact.name }} · {{ contact.email }}</li>
    </ul>
</template>

Multi-word search: one whereAny per word#

Users type “sara acme” and expect a contact whose name has “sara” and whose notes or email mention “acme”. Call whereAny once per word; each call is its own group, joined with and:

foreach (preg_split('/\s+/', $search, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY) as $word) {
    $query->whereAny(['name', 'email', 'notes'], 'like', "%{$word}%");
}
// where (name like ? or email like ? or notes like ?)
//   and (name like ? or email like ? or notes like ?)

In the lab, “sara acme” found Sara at Acme and nobody else. Try writing that one with hand-nested closures before your coffee.

Gotchas#

An empty column list adds no filter. whereAny([], 'like', '%zzz%') compiled to plain where "team_id" = ? in the lab and returned the whole team. If the columns come from config or a “search in” dropdown, check the list is not empty before you call it.

Closures in the list get a query builder, not Eloquent. Each closure receives Illuminate\Database\Query\Builder, so model scopes are not there: fn ($q) => $q->vip() threw BadMethodCallException. Worse, fn ($q) => $q->whereHas('company') did not throw. The query builder’s dynamic where* handling turned it into where "has" = 'company', which returned zero rows on SQLite; MySQL and Postgres would reject the unknown has column instead. For relations, either use a subquery in the closure ($q->whereIn('company_id', DB::table('companies')->select('id')->whereLike('name', $term))) or keep the relation outside:

Contact::where('team_id', 1)->where(fn ($query) => $query
    ->whereAny(['name', 'email'], 'like', $term)
    ->orWhereHas('company', fn ($company) => $company->whereLike('name', $term)));

Both versions passed in the lab.

like is case-sensitive on Postgres. whereAny([...], 'like', ...) sends like as is. On Postgres, pass 'ilike' as the operator, or use whereLike closures, which compile to ilike on Postgres and like on MySQL.

A leading % skips normal indexes. That is fine for a few thousand contacts. On a big table, reach for a full-text index or Scout instead of adding more columns to the list.

Try it yourself#

use App\Models\User;

Artisan::command('whereany:check', function () {
    $this->line(User::where('id', '>', 0)->where('name', 'like', '%a%')->orWhere('email', 'like', '%a%')->toSql());
    $this->line(User::where('id', '>', 0)->whereAny(['name', 'email'], 'like', '%a%')->toSql());
});

php artisan whereany:check

The first line has no parentheses around the or. The second does. Now grep your app for orWhere( and check each one sits inside a closure.

How useful is this?#

Recap#

• whereAny matches any column, whereAll every column, whereNone no column, each wrapped in its own parentheses.
• Same SQL as the hand-written where(fn ...) closure, so swapping is safe; the ungrouped orWhere version leaked a team 2 row in our lab.
• Use one whereAny per word for multi-word search, and closures in the list for per-column operators.
• Mind NULLs in whereNone, empty column lists, closures that are not Eloquent, and ilike on Postgres.
• Tested with 14 Pest tests in a scratch Laravel 13.39 app, including an Inertia endpoint.

FAQ#

Next steps#

• Search one column from a Vue field, the single-column version of this search
• Vue onWatcherCleanup, for the debounced search box
• Laravel + Vue pagination, to keep ?search= on every page link
• Laravel docs: Where Any / All / None clauses

Sources#

• Laravel 13 docs: Where Any / All / None clauses
• Laravel 13 docs: Logical grouping
• laravel/framework PR #50344: Add whereAll and whereAny (Laravel 10.47)
• laravel/framework PR #52260: Add whereNone (Laravel 11.19)
• laravel/framework PR #52555: whereAny closures (Laravel 11.22)
• laravel/framework v10.47.0 release
• Source: Illuminate\Database\Query\Builder