Laravel 5.2.3 repeated part of code in several controllers/methods - php

Question

I don't know if it's good practice. But I think that I can put this part of code:
$categories = DB::table('categories')
//[something]
->get();
somewhere to not ctrl+c ctrl+v in many places. Can you tell me what can I do with it in Laravel?
full example:
class FirstController extends Controller
{
public function index()
{
$articles = DB::table('articles')
//[something]
->get();
$categories = DB::table('categories')
//[something]
->get();
return view('pages.home', compact('articles', 'categories'));
}
public function show($id)
{
$categories = DB::table('categories')
//[something]
->get();
$article = Article::findOrFail($id);
return view('pages.show', compact('article', 'categories'));
}
}
class SecondController extends Controller
{
public function index()
{
$categories = DB::table('categories')
//[something]
->get();
return view('pages.contact')->with('categories', $categories);
}
}

Answer 1

What you might consider is writing a separate Repository (and Service) for every group of database interactions with method names that accurately describe what is going on and then using Laravels Dependency Injection framework to wire it to your controllers. This is a good resource on how to do that. This also looks really promising. This is the recommended approach if you anticipate that this project will become larger and should remain maintainable (and if your time and resources allow it).
You should make the consideration if what you're currently doing is "good enough" or if it would become unmaintainable in the future and change the implementation to using repositories (and possible services).
After studying your code a bit, a CategoryRepository would look something like this:
use Illuminate\Database\ConnectionInterface;
class CategoryRepository {
protected $connectionInterface;
public function __construct(ConnectionInterface $_connectionInterface) {
$this->connectionInterface = $_connectionInterface;
}
public function all() {
return db::table('categories')
//[something]
->get();
}
}
which you can then reference and use in your controllers like so:
class FirstController extends Controller {
protected $categoryRepository;
public function __construct(CategoryRepository $_categoryRepository) {
$this->categoryRepository = $_categoryRepository;
}
...
public function show($id) {
$categories = $this->categoryRepository->all();
$article = Article::findOrFail($id);
return view('pages.show', compact('article', 'categories'));
}
...
}
You could then try to write an get method, a save method etc. After that, you could write an ArticleRepository and incrementally clean up your controller.
I haven't verified this code so copy-and-paste with caution.

Answer 2

What you need is called View Composer in Laravel.
View composers are callbacks or class methods that are called when a view is rendered. If you have data that you want to be bound to a view each time that view is rendered, a view composer can help you organize that logic into a single location.
More about View Composers: https://laravel.com/docs/5.2/views#view-composers