Do you mean to echo them together ? You could do

 // User model
public function getFullName() {
    return $this->first_name . ' ' . $this->last_name;
}

eriktisme said:

Do you mean to echo them together ? You could do

// User model

public function getFullName() { return $this->first_name . ' ' . $this->last_name; }

You forgot part of the accessor method name 'Attribute':

public function getFullNameAttribute() {
        return $this->first_name . ' ' . $this->last_name;
}

And to answer the question - if you want to query you can concatenate the fields in select or search through both first_name and last_name

$User::where('firstname', $firstname)->where('lastname', $lastname)->get();

The problem is that the user does not want to break apart the firstname & last name when querying. This is what I tried, but it does not work.Note I am hardcoding the fullname, I know I need to do something different to pass it in, but first I want to get this step below to work.

 $test=function($tid){
            $user = DB::table('users')
                ->select(DB::raw('CONCAT_WS(" ",`firstname`,`lastname`) as `wholename`,id'))
                ->where('CONCAT_WS(" ",`firstname`,`lastname`)','LIKE','John Smith')->first()
            ;
            return $user;
        };

        $u=$test($query);

        dd($u);

The error returned is....

Illuminate \ Database \ QueryException SQLSTATE[42000]: Syntax error or access violation: 1064 You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'firstname,lastname) LIKE ? limit 1' at line 1 (SQL: select CONCAT_WS(" ",firstname,lastname) as wholename,id from users where CONCAT_WS(" ",firstname,lastname) LIKE John Smith limit 1)

Although I am not happy with it, as a workaround I have added fullname to my user table. Hopefully, a better solution will emerge in the future.

Again, the problem was not with returning fullname, it was searching by fullname when the user table only contains firstname and lastname columns.

Thanks jarektkaczyk, I am marking yours as the solution.

I know this is an old thread, but you can achieve this quite easily with

$user = User::whereRaw('CONCAT(firstname, " ", lastname) LIKE ? ', '%' . $request->input('name') . '%');