title: When to use a model in Laravel 4
body: <p>I'm new to Laravel and MVC, and I'm struggling with when and where I should do things...</p>
  
  <p>I have a state select, drop-down, field (CA, NY, TX, etc) that I'd like populated from a DB table.  This DB table is big (3 million rows) as it contains info of every location in the USA.  So my raw SQL looks like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>select distinct state_alpha,state_numeric
  from location_code
  order by state_alpha;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I will have to do this several times throughout all of my application.  The table is also read only - the user will never insert or update it.  I will eventually have similar queries - pulling from the same table - that'll return counties in a state, cities in a county, etc.</p>
  
  <p>So my 1st question is: Should I create a model for something like this?  I'm worried because I have no idea how the model works underneath the covers, and I don't want it needlessly reading from the table or prepping it to be written to or something else.</p>
  
  <p>My next question:  Barring your answer of my 1st question, could you please provide a basic example of how I'd accomplish this.</p>
  
  <p>Sorry if I sound really stupid, but it's not like the documentation for Laravel is really that inclussive - it says what it needs to allow you to use it, but it doesn't cover how it works very well - so much of this is magic to me.</p>