Count database column text values - Laravel - php

Question

So, I have a database table that looks something like this:
id | title | category | author | post | created_at | updated_at
The category column is a text value, so it currently has values such as 'Tech', 'Web', and 'Animal'. What I need to do, is to count each category value in the category column and have an output such as:
Tech (2)
Animal (2)
Web (1)
Now, I do kind of have it working. It currently looks like:
Tech (1) (1)
Animal (1) (1)
Web (1)
The query in my controller is:
$categoryCount = Post::select(DB::raw('count(*) as cat_count, category'))
->groupBy('category')
->count();
My view currently looks like:
#if(count($category) > 0)
#foreach($category as $cat)
<a href="{{ URL('category/'.str_replace(' ', '-', $cat->name)) }}"
class="list-group-item">{{ $cat->name }}
#foreach($posts as $post)
#if($post->category == $cat->name)
({{ $categoryCount }})
#endif
#endforeach
</a>
#endforeach
#endif
I am quite new to Laravel itself, so I'm still learning. Any help to achieve what I want would be appreciated.

Answer 1

You do a DB raw count and then again a count. It will indeed then return always one. Change your query:
$categoryCount = Post::select(DB::raw('count(*) as cat_count, category'))
->groupBy('category')
->get();
And your results should be different. This has by the way nothing to do with Laravel, merely that you count the count :-)