Laravel: Searching in MySQL database with items from Form::textarea - mysql

Question

I'm trying to query a MySQL database for items coming from a textarea. My controller's store() function has the following code:
// [...] validation is done here and assumed ok
foreach(explode("\n", Input::get('itemlist')) as $line) {
$item = preg_split('/(?<=\d) (?=[a-z])|(?<=[a-z])(?=\d)/i', $line);
if (isset($item[1])) {
echo 'Looking for ' . $item[1];
$itemObj = DB::table('items')->select('name', 'id')->where('name', '=', trim($item[1], "\r"))->first();
var_dump($itemObj);
}
}
The data received from Input::get('itemlist') is a list of items and amount, something like:
5 apples
2 oranges
1 banana
The Looking for ... part displays the item names properly. Also, the var_dump will actually show the proper result for the last thing searched for, everything else is just 'null'.
Is there something about DB:table that stops from doing queries in a loop like this? Should I do this some other way? Thanks!
EDIT Turns out there were trailing '\r' after each line except the last one so the query was for "Some Item\r" and not "Some Item". Fixed it above!