title: COALESCE in laravel
body: <p>Is it possible to use COALESCE in laravel query.</p>
  
  <pre><code> $multipleitems = DB::table('votes')
                         -&gt;select('masterItemId',DB::raw('sum(votes) as voteSum'))
                         -&gt;whereBetween('voteDate',array($startDate,$endDate))
                         -&gt;where($condition)
                         -&gt;groupBy('masterItemId')
                         -&gt;get();
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>It's my code and i wants to get each item and its total votes. If there is no vote i want to get '0'.</p>
  
  <p>But in above code it returns items that have atleast 1 vote.
  Is there any method to get this done in laravel?</p>