laravel/framework — pull request #4092 by JosephSilber (2014-04-10 04:59:18+00:00)
Title: New Model::hydrate & Model::hydrateRaw

Adds two static methods to the Eloquent Model:

$items = DB::table('foo')->blah(...)->get();

$collection = Model::hydrate($items);

$collection = Model::hydrateRaw('SELECT * FROM some raw ? query', ['bindings']);

Both of these are extremely useful. People ask about them all the time on IRC.