Laravel Pagination links vs render

Question

I have been working with Laravel 5.x for a few months now and I was just wondering on what is the difference between using links and render when using pagination. I did a few research and people are using the two the same way.

Given I have a array variable that has been returned from my controller and I would cut the pagination into 5 items per view.

public function index()
{
    $variable = Jobs::getJob()->paginate(5);
    return view('index', compact('variable'));
}

on my index.blade.php I will display the items that I have taken

@foreach($variable as $key => $values)
     //code here
@endforeach

{{ $variable->render() }}
//same result as
{{ $variable->links() }}

My question now is what are the difference between the two and when should one be use instead of the other?

Thanks

Answer 1

The links() (source) method is simply an alias for the render() (source) method. It seems it was introduced in Laravel 5.2.

So basically, it doesn't make a difference which you use.