In Doctrine the query builder can take objects that describe what you want to do [1], not the best but still way better to read and understand. There's also the DQL which is an SQL-like language that's pretty well integrated in phpstorm and is quite close to SQL [2]

[1] https://www.doctrine-project.org/projects/doctrine-collectio... (for collections but you can use them for queries too)

[2] https://www.doctrine-project.org/projects/doctrine-orm/en/3.... / https://www.doctrine-project.org/projects/doctrine-orm/en/3....