Passing counter variable from controller to View in laravel 5 - php

Question

I am trying to make a counter in my laravel site. This counter takes all the comments from model Comments which were created from Carbon::now() until startofMonth(). So I have my controller and function counter as so:
class CommentsController extends Controller
{
public function counter()
{
$new_comments=Comments::where('created_at', Carbon::now()->startofMonth())->get();
$counted->count($new_comments['created_at']);
return View::make('pages.dashboard')->with('new_comments', $counted);
}
}
My blade template:
<div class="row">
<div class="col-xs-3">
<i class="fa fa-comments fa-5x"></i>
</div>
<div class="col-xs-9 text-right">
<div class="huge">{{!!$new_comments!!}}</div>
<div>New Comments!</div>
</div>
I keep getting a variable undefined error message even though the variable is called in the controller! The dashboard page works fine when the variable is not called in the blade template.
EDIT:
I have managed to get this working if ignore the controller and add the following into my view:
{{App\Comments::count()}}
This only shows the total amount of rows in the table Comments, but I will try and add the mySQL query in to it.
I still don't know why it can't be called as a variable from the controller.

Answer 1

In your blade template, you are calling it correctly but ! brings such issues {{!!$new_comments!!}} it will say variable undefined.
Try it without !!, It worked for me.

Answer 2

First: you want to take all comments are created from begin of month to now, you need a whereBetween query, not equal.
Second: You call a undefined variable $counted. I think you need remove
$counted->count($new_comments['created_at']);
and pass $new_comments to view instead of $counted
return View::make('pages.dashboard')->with('new_comments', $new_comments);
and display comments count in view
{{ $new_comments->count() }}
Hope this help you

Answer 3

This is a bit of a late answer, but I believe you're passing your variables incorrectly with the ->with() function. From my experience with Laravel, ->with() uses an array syntax for passing multiple variables to a view. For example:
return View::make('pages.dashboard')
->with(["new_comments" => $new_comments, "counted" => $counted]);
// Note the array usage, works with [] or array()
Then, in your dashboard.blade.php you can call either {{ $new_comments }} or {!! $new_comments !!} to echo out that value (one ignores HTML markup, one includes it.)
On a side note, trying to echo out the contents of an Eloquent collection (i.e. Comment::get() as opposed to something like Comment::first()) may not work. You should loop over the results and echo accordingly:
#foreach($new_comments AS $new_comment)
{!! $new_comment->created_at !!}
...
#endforeach

Answer 4

This was solved. I was calling the return view::make(dashboard) in another (page)controller. This controller took precedent therefore this view did not occur. Therefore in my pagecontroller I applied the following:
public function dashboard()
{
$count = Comments::where('created_at', '>', Carbon::today())->count();
return View::make('pages.dashboard')->with('new_comments_count', $count);
}
I can then call new_comments_count in my view.
Many thanks for the help.