Laravel Routing and Controller for Search

Question

I'm building my first basic laravel web app, after following a few tutorials this is the first one I'm tinkering with on my own. I'm running into to some trouble with routing to a controller and then getting the correct url.

Ideally at this point I should only have two routes / and /{user}. On the homepage you can search via a form for the user and the form should take you to /{user}.

Routes (I have three cause I'm still trying to get this to work, and I think I need a POST):

Route::get('/', 'HomeController@index');
Route::get('/{user}', 'HomeController@student');
Route::post('/', 'HomeController@studentLookUp');

Home Controller:

public function index()
{
    return View::make('helpdesk');
}

public function student($user) {
    return View::make('selfservice')
        ->with('user', $user);
}

public function studentLookUp() {
    $user = Input::get('ID');

    return View::make('selfservice')
        ->with('user', $user);
}

Form:

{{ Form::open(array('class'=>'navbar-form navbar-left', 'role'=>'search'), array('action' => 'HomeController@student')) }}

  <div class="form-group">
    {{ Form::text('ID', '', array('placeholder'=>'ID', 'class'=>'form-control') ); }}
  </div>

  {{ Form::button('Search', array('class'=>'btn btn-default')) }}  

{{ Form::close() }}

At this point I can search from the homepage ('/') and it will take me back to the homepage but with the searched for user which is how I want it to work except it doesn't have the right url of homepage.com/username.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

First register a route to listen your search request:

1. Search Route: Register search route.

//route search 
Route::get('/search',['uses' => 'SearchController@getSearch','as' => 'search']);

2. Search View:- Now create a search form in a view:-

<form  action="/search" method="get">
<input type="text"  name="q" placeholder="Search.."/>
<button type="submit">Search</button>
</form>

3. SearchController :

Now create SearchController to handle your searching logic. SearchController :

    <?php

    class SearchController extends \BaseController {


        public function getSearch()
        {
            //get keywords input for search
            $keyword=  Input::get('q');

            //search that student in Database
             $students= Student::find($keyword);

            //return display search result to user by using a view
            return View::make('selfservice')->with('student', $students);
        }

    }

Now you have to create one view selfservice to display your search result.

4. Selfservice View:

@foreach ($students as $key=> $student)
<div>
<a href="{{ URL::route('student.show', ['id' => $student->id]) }}">{{$student->name}}</a>
</div>              
@endforeach

Here for each student result, one link will be created. That link will be link:-

website.domain/{student}

5. Update Routes for Student

Route::get('/{student}',['uses' => 'HomeController@student','as' => 'student.show']);

---

UPDATE updated the answer to get student page directly

---

To redirect from search to website.domain\{user} follow these steps:-

1. Modify SearchController

<?php

class SearchController extends \BaseController {


    public function getSearch()
    {
        //get keywords input for search
        $keyword=  Input::get('q');

        //search that student in Database
         $student= Student::find($keyword);

        //redirect directly to student.show route with student detail
        return Redirect::route('student.show', array('student' => $student));
    }

}

2. Now add a function for Route student.show in HomeController Route::get('/{student}',['uses' => 'HomeController@student','as' => 'student.show']);

In HomeController

public function student($student)
{
    //here display student detail
}