Passing Optional parameters not calling to the correct one - php

Question

Little stuck with Parameters, market and sort are optional
Route::get('Category/{title}/{market?}/{sort?}', 'HomeController#productList');
But when i do this in the URI
url: Category/title/?sort=3
it doesn't register as 3 for sort but goes in as the market paramater
of course if the URI was Category/title/Makert/3 it will return what i want
public function productList($title, $market = null, $sort = null)
{
// Gets the Categories with its Markets
$categorys= Product::cats();
$brands = Product::CategoryWithMarket($title, $market)->groupBy('Brand')->get();
$subCat = Product::where('Category', $title)->groupBy('Market')->orderBy('Market', 'ASC')->get();
if (!$market) {
$marketList = Product::where('Category', $title)->orderBy('Brand', 'ASC')->orderBy('Label', 'ASC')->paginate(15);
$brands = Product::where('Category', $title)->groupBy('Brand')->orderBy('Brand', 'ASC')->get();
$mainTitle = ucfirst($title);
}
else {
// Gets the list of products with the catery and market attributes arranged by the brand of product
$marketList = Product::CategoryWithMarket($title, $market)->paginate(15);
$mainTitle = ucfirst($title) . ' ' . ucfirst($market) ;
}
return $sort;
In theroy it should pass back the sort parameter which is 3 but it doesnt return anything, so my question is how do i get sort to return its value 3 rather than being null

Answer 1

Router only uses the path to match the routes and only path parameteres are injected to the controller. So if you you want sort to be passed to the controller from the router you need to put that in the path (/{sort?}), not in the query (?sort=3).
If you want to access query parameters in your controller, you can do this via $request object (if it's your action's argument) or Request facade:
public function someAction() {
echo Request::query('sort');
}