Automatically build laravel pagination object - php

Question

in my app each time I retrieve paginated results from the database I have to do somethig like this:
$posts = Post::latest()->with(['category','user'])->paginate($request->input('paginate', 6));
$posts =
[
'data' => $posts,
'pagination' => [
'total' => $posts->total(),
'per_page' =>$posts->perPage(),
'current_page' => $posts->currentPage(),
'last_page' => $posts->lastPage(),
'from' => $posts->firstItem(),
'to' => $posts->lastItem()
]
];
As you see I first retrieve the results from database and then I have to manually create the paginated data array, always doing the same seems bad and tedious to me honestly, I was wondering if there is a laravel magic method to automatically build the pagination payload array?

Answer 1

You can use Eloquent: API Resources "https://laravel.com/docs/7.x/eloquent-resources"
You should create a resource: php artisan make:resource PostCollection
and you should change method toArray($request) for something like this:
public function toArray($request)
{
return [
'data' => $this->collection,
'pagination' => [
'total' => $this->total(),
'per_page' =>$this->perPage(),
'current_page' => $this->currentPage(),
'last_page' => $this->lastPage(),
'from' => $this->firstItem(),
'to' => $this->lastItem()
]
];
}
Now when you want to paginate your Model you just do it like this:
//Get posts
$posts = Post::latest()->with(['category','user'])
->paginate($request->input('paginate', 6)));
//Use your resource (Collection)
$postsPaginate = new PostCollection($posts);
//Return your resource
return $porstsPaginate;