Laravel Filters

Contents

• Installation
• Usage
• FAQ

Installation

Composer

Open your console and cd into your Laravel project. Run:

composer require kouks/laravel-filters

And you are all set up!

Usage

Creating filters

You can store your filters anywhere in your project but I advise to use the app/Filters directory to keep thing constistent. In your filters directory, create a new filter class as in following example. Not that we suppose that we have a Post model with the id, title, body and active columns including timestamps.

namespace App\Filters;

use Koch\Filters\Filter;

class PostFilter extends Filter
{
    //
}

Now you can specify your orderable and searchable columns.

namespace App\Filters;

use Koch\Filters\Filter;

class PostFilter extends Filter
{
    protected $searchable = ['id', 'title', 'body'];
    
    protected $orderable = [
        'id' => 'id',
        'title' => 'title',
    ];
}

Note that all the filters take data from the query strings in you url. The above example will react to query strings in format e. g. /?title=asc or /?search=pattern.

Also note that oderable array is a key - value pair. This is because the key corresponds to the query string name, whereas the value corresponds to a database column.

Setting up the filters

Simple searching

Your class for simple searching could look as follows.

namespace App\Filters;

use Koch\Filters\Filter;

class PostFilter extends Filter
{
    protected $searchable = ['id', 'title', 'body'];
}

This setup reacts to the url query string in format /?search=pattern and will return all the results that match the search pattern in specified columns.

Simple ordering

Simple ordering class could look like this.

namespace App\Filters;

use Koch\Filters\Filter;

class PostFilter extends Filter
{
    protected $orderable = [
        'id' => 'id',
        'topic' => 'title',
    ];
}

This setup allows you to use the query strings in format /?id={desc/asc} or /?topic={desc/asc}. Note that we specified that the topic query string points to the title database column.

Searching in related tables

Your class for related searching could look as follows. For this example we suppose to have the Author model with the columns of id and name, which has a one - many relationship with the Post model.

namespace App\Filters;

use Koch\Filters\Filter;

class PostFilter extends Filter
{
    protected $searchable = ['id', 'title', 'authors.id', 'authors.name'];
}

This format allows us to include the author's name and id in the results. Simple as that, however, note that this will work only for one - many and one - one relationships, which are properly set up, following the Laravel conventions.

Orderng by related table's columns

Related ordering is set up as in the folowing example. For this example we suppose to have the Author model with the columns of id and name, which has a one - many relationship with the Post model.

namespace App\Filters;

use Koch\Filters\Filter;

class PostFilter extends Filter
{
    protected $orderable = [
        'id' => 'id', 
        'title' => 'title', 
        'author_id' => 'authors.id', 
        'author_name' => 'authors.name',
    ];
}

This format allows us to order also by the author's name and id with the query string of /?{author_id/author_name}={desc/asc}. Simple as that, however, note that this will work only for many - one and one - one relationships, which are properly set up, following the Laravel conventions.

Custom filters

You are also allowed to setup you own filters by creating new methods on the filter class itself. Consider following example:

namespace App\Filters;

use Koch\Filters\Filter;

class PostFilter extends Filter
{
    public function popular($direction)
    {
        return $this->builder->orderBy('votes', $direction);
    }
}

Above example will correspond to the query string in the format /?popular={desc/asc}. The query string name corresponds to the name of the method and its value is passed as an argument. Note that you are able to access the parent class builder property and adjust it accordingly.

Abstracion

This package comes with the Koch\Filters\Contracts\Filter interface, which allows you to make your own implementations of the filter.

FAQ

Nobody has ever asked me anything about this package so I can't determine the frequency of questions.