In Laravel the query builder generates the query but if you need the raw query as a string you add some lines to the code. For example, the  query given below is the query genereated by query builder.

DB::table('users')->get();

The actual output you want is

 SELECT * FROM users

We need to use toSql() in the QueryBuilder instance

DB::table('users')->toSql() 

or use QueryLog like this.

 DB::getQueryLog()

For Laravel versions 5.2 and above use DBListen

DB::listen(function ($query) {
// $query->sql
 // $query->bindings
// $query->time
 });