How to display records in view based on their first letter?

Question

In my controller I am passing to a view a bunch of categories in alphabetical order like this :

public function index()
    {
        $categories = Category::orderBy('name', 'asc')->get();

        return view('categories')->with('categories',$categories);
    }

In my view, I want to display in separate columns corresponding to letters from the alphabet each of these categories, so in column "A" I will have all categories starting with A and so on.

Is it possible to filter the results in the view by letter in order to achieve this, and if yes, how can it be done?

Answer 1

You can group the list of categories by first letter in your controller and then pass the result to your view, here is how to do:

Controller:

public function index() {

    $categories = Category::orderBy('name', 'asc')->get();

    $groups = $categories->reduce(function ($carry, $category) {

        // get first letter
        $first_letter = $category['name'][0];

        if ( !isset($carry[$first_letter]) ) {
            $carry[$first_letter] = [];
        }

        $carry[$first_letter][] = $category;

        return $carry;

    }, []);

    return view('categories')->with('groups', $groups);
}

View:

@foreach($groups as $letter => $group)

    <ul>

        <li>{{ $letter }}</li>

        @foreach($group as $category)

            <li>{{ $category['name'] }}</li>

        @endforeach

    </ul>

@endforeach

Here is a working example using array_reduce (it's the same as Collection::reduce function above)