title: How do I do a type cast in Laravel Fluent?
body: <p>How can I do a type cast for comparing values in Laravel Fluent? For example if I have the following MySQL:</p>
  
  <pre><code>SELECT * from table1 WHERE  CAST(`values` AS SIGNED) &gt; $myVar
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This is what I currently have after writing the above in Fluent:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$query = DB::connection('mysql')-&gt;table('table1')
      -&gt;where('values', '&gt;', $myVar);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Currently the database is treating this as a string. The column in the table needs to be kept as a varchar for other reasons. How can I do the type cast for this particular query in Laravel Fluent? </p>