How to select count with Laravel's fluent query builder?
You can use an array in the select() to define more columns and you can use the DB::raw() there with aliasing it to followers. Should look like this:
$query = DB::table('category_issue') ->select(array('issues.*', DB::raw('COUNT(issue_subscriptions.issue_id) as followers'))) ->where('category_id', '=', 1) ->join('issues', 'category_issue.issue_id', '=', 'issues.id') ->left_join('issue_subscriptions', 'issues.id', '=', 'issue_subscriptions.issue_id') ->group_by('issues.id') ->order_by('followers', 'desc') ->get();
$count = DB::table('category_issue')->count();will give you the number of items.
For more detailed information check Fluent Query Builder section in beautiful Laravel Documentation.