Hidden inputs in Laravel blade.php - php

Question

Hey so I'm trying to sort entries by a type of pet, the code below is code from my blade.php
<div>
<td>
<form>
#csrf
<input name="cat" type="hidden" value="cat">
<a name="cat" href="{{ url('sorting') }}" value="cat">Cat</a>
</form>
</td>
</div>
In the blade file I'd have multiple links such as cat, dog, rabbit which essentially act as filtering options
I have a sort method in my controller that does the following
public function sorting(Request $request){
if($request->input('cat') === 'cat'){
$pets = Pet::Where('type', 'cat')->get();
return view('index', compact('pets'));
}
}
In my sort method, I'm trying to check if the cat link is clicked and then if it is it would return only pets of type cat, the problem I have is that my $request->input('cat') is returning a null. How would I correct this?

Answer 1

You have multiple issues in your code:
You don't seem to have a way to actually submit the form. The link in the post won't do it on it's own (unless you have some event on that link in JS)
<a>-tags don't have a value-attribute and the name-attribute means something completely different for links and is not for submitting data through forms.
A form without a method will use GET as default. You're trying to retrieve the value in PHP using $request->input() which is for POST-requests. For GET requests (which uses the query string to pass data), use $request->query().
However... you don't need the form. Just pass the value as a query parameter in the link instead:
<td>
Cat
</td>
Then in your PHP code, retrieve the value using:
if ($request->query('sort') === 'cat') {
// your code
}