Illegal operator and value combination when paginating in Laravel - php

Question

I am a newbie at Laravel 6. In the view, I created a form, and when it's submitted, it should return a table filtered with the links of pagination at the bottom. All works correctly, but when I click a link of the pagination appears the following error: "Illegal operator and value combination."
I tried even using the "render" method in the view, but nothing changed. I see the links, but when I click one of them, the error appears.
View
#if (isset($meetings))
<div class="container">
<table class="table table-condensed table-bordered table-hover">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>ID</th>
<th>Participants</th>
<th>Description</th>
<th>Room</th>
<th>Date</th>
<th>Start Hour</th>
<th>End Hour</th>
<th>Edit</th>
<th>Delete</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
#foreach($meetings as $meeting)
<tr>
<td>{{ $meeting->id }}</td>
<td>{{ $meeting->id_participants }}</td>
<td>{{ $meeting->description }}</td>
<td>{{ $meeting->id_room }}</td>
<td>{{ $meeting->date }}</td>
<td>{{ $meeting->start_hour }}</td>
<td>{{ $meeting->end_hour }}</td>
<td><button type="button" class="btn btn-primary">Edit</button></td>
<td>
<form action="{{ route('nextMeetingsDeleteMeeting', ['id' => $meeting->id]) }}" method="POST">
#csrf
{{ method_field('PUT') }}
<button type="submit" class="btn btn-danger" id={{ $meeting->id }}>Delete</button>
</form>
</td>
</tr>
#endforeach
</tbody>
</table>
<div>
{{ $meetings->links() }}
</div>
</div>
#endif
Controller
public function fetch_table(Request $request)
{
$this->validate($request, [
'start_date' => 'date',
'end_date' => 'date',
]);
$start_date = $request['start_date'];
$end_date = $request['end_date'];
$participants = $request['participants'];
$room_input = $request['rooms'];
$rooms = Room::all();
$users = User::all()->where('is_active', '1')->sortBy('surname');
$meetings = $this->build_table($room_input, $start_date, $end_date, $participants);
return view('reportArea', compact('users', 'rooms', 'meetings', 'start_date', 'end_date', 'participants',
'room_input'))->withInput($request->all());
}
public function build_table($room, $start_date, $end_date, $participants)
{
if (!empty($room) && !empty($participants)) {
$meetings = DB::table('meetings')
->where('is_active', '1')
->where('id_room', $room)
->where('date', '>', $start_date)
->where('date', '<', $end_date)
->where(function ($query) use ($participants) {
$query->where('id_participants', $participants)
->orWhere('id_participants', 'like', '%;'.$participants)
->orWhere('id_participants', 'like', $participants.';%')
->orWhere('id_participants', 'like', '%;'.$participants.';%');
})
->paginate(2);
} elseif (!empty($participants)) {
$meetings = DB::table('meetings')
->where('is_active', '1')
->where('date', '>', $start_date)
->where('date', '<', $end_date)
->where(function ($query) use ($participants) {
$query->where('id_participants', $participants)
->orWhere('id_participants', 'like', '%;'.$participants)
->orWhere('id_participants', 'like', $participants.';%')
->orWhere('id_participants', 'like', '%;'.$participants.';%');
})
->paginate(2);
} elseif (!empty($rooms)) {
$meetings = DB::table('meetings')
->where('is_active', '1')
->where('date', '>', $start_date)
->where('date', '<', $end_date)
->where('id_room', $room)
->paginate(2);
} else {
$meetings = DB::table('meetings')
->where('is_active', '1')
->where('date', '>', $start_date)
->where('date', '<', $end_date)
->paginate(2);
}
return $meetings;
}
Route
Route::get('/reportarea/fetchtable', 'ReportAreaController#fetch_table')->name('reportAreaFetchTable');
Currently, all works OK, but when I click a link, the mentioned error appears. In other words, if I add the method paginate(2) I see correctly only two rows on the table, but when I click the link to see the other ones, it doesn't work correctly. Is anyone able to help me solve this problem?

Answer 1

You will probably need to be appending to the query string for the links for the pager to pass your other parameters you need. You are passing null as a value for those query parameters and getting the error.
As an example:
{{ $meetings->appends(['start_date' => ..., 'end_date' => ..., ...])->links() }}
Or just passing all the current query parameters (the paginator will ignore what ever key is used for the current page):
{{ $meetings->appends(request()->query())->links() }}
Laravel 6.x Docs - Pagination - Displaying Results - Appending To Pagination Links
Laravel 6.x Docs - Requests - Retrieving Input - Retrieving Input From The Query String