Cannot access one particular model in Laravel, getting a BLANK page

Question

I am trying to get distinct city names from a MySQL table called "city".

Here is how the controller code looks like:

public function getCityNames()
{
    if(Auth::check()) 
    {
        $cities = DB::table('city')->distinct()->get();
        var_dump($cities);
    }
    else
    {
        return Redirect::route('account-signin');
    }
}

Here is the code for the model City:

<?php

use Illuminate\Auth\UserInterface;
use Illuminate\Auth\Reminders\RemindableInterface;

class City extends Eloquent
{
    /**
     * The database table used by the model.
     *
     * @var string
     */
    protected $table = 'city';

    /**
     * Using a different primary key name
     *
     */
    protected $primaryKey  = 'geoname_id';  

    public $timestamps = false;
}

The Problem

I can output distinct values from other models using the exact code as in this controller above but when I run it for the city, I get a BLANK page.

• I am using Laravel 4 with detailed error messages enabled.
• Of course, there is data in the 'city' table

UPDATE: When I write the following, I get data:

public function Test()
{
    return City::where('country_name', '=', 'Canada')->get();
}

But when I write the following, I get the black page? Something with the data size?

public function Test()
{
    return City::all()->get();
}

Answer 1

Not sure if this is problem, but are you trying to view the output of var_dump($cities) ?

If so, shouldn't return var_dump($cities); give you the output, rather than the empty page?

Code looks like this:

public function getCityNames()
{
    if(Auth::check()) // Tip: You can apply auth filters to controllers if you want. 
    {
        $cities = DB::table('city')->distinct()->get();
        return var_dump($cities); // Add return here.
    }
    else
    {
        return Redirect::route('account-signin');
    }

    // If the code doesn't go anywhere, it goes here.
    return "TEST";
}

Answer 2

I am able to access the city table fine when I ran small queries (see my update in the question). Only explanation could be that I was exceeding the browser buffer size when I was trying to get all . This table has more than 70,000 rows.