Many has been said already but keep in mind that there are a times where u don't want to output all the records from the database into your select input field ..... Key example I have been working on this school management site where I have to output all the noticeboard categories in a select statement. From my controller this is the code I wrote
Noticeboard:: groupBy()->pluck('category')->get();
This way u get distinct record as they have been grouped so no repetition of records