How to get distinct values for non-key column fields in Laravel?

Question

This might be quite easy but have no idea how to.

I have a table that can have repeated values for a particular non-key column field. How do I write a SQL query usin

Answer 1

I found this method working quite well (for me) to produce a flat array of unique values:

$uniqueNames = User::select('name')->distinct()->pluck('name')->toArray();

If you ran ->toSql() on this query builder, you will see it generates a query like this:

select distinct `name` from `users`

The ->pluck() is handled by illuminate\collection lib (not via sql query).