How to add brackets around WHERE conditions with Laravel query builder

Very useful, I use this:

->where(function ($query) use ($texto){
    $query->where('UPPER(V_CODIGO)', 'LIKE', '%'.Str::upper($texto).'%')
          ->orWhere('UPPER(V_NOMBRE)', 'LIKE', '%'.Str::upper($texto).'%');
});

Solved this myself by using a closure, as described in Parameter Grouping in the query builder documentation.

 $query = DB::table('readings');
 $this->builder->orWhere(function($query) use ($selections)
 {
    foreach ($selections as $selection) {
       $query->orWhere('id', $selection);
    }
 });
 $query->whereBetween('date', array($from, $to));
 $query->groupBy('id');

Sometimes you may need to group several "where" clauses within parentheses in order to achieve your query's desired logical grouping. In fact, you should generally always group calls to the orWhere method in parentheses in order to avoid unexpected query behavior. To accomplish this, you may pass a closure to the where method:

$users = DB::table('users')
           ->where('name', '=', 'John')
           ->where(function ($query) {
               $query->where('votes', '>', 100)
                     ->orWhere('title', '=', 'Admin');
           })
           ->get();

As you can see, passing a closure into the where method instructs the query builder to begin a constraint group. The closure will receive a query builder instance which you can use to set the constraints that should be contained within the parenthesis group. The example above will produce the following SQL:

select * from users where name = 'John' and (votes > 100 or title = 'Admin')

I couldn't find this in documentation, whereNested was what I was looking for. Hope it helps anybody.

$q->whereNested(function($q) use ($nameSearch) {
    $q->where('name', 'LIKE', "%{$nameSearch}%");
    $q->orWhere('surname', 'LIKE', "%{$nameSearch}%");
});

Note: This is on Laravel 4.2