Global queries in laravel 5 - php

Question

Controller:
$categories = Categories::get();
return view('coolpage', ['categories' => $categories]);
Blade View:
<ul>
#foreach ($categories as $category)
<li>{{ $category->title }}</li>
#endforeach
</ul>
This works perfect on individual views.
I want to be able to have these categories show up on every page (this will be used as a dropdown menu in the header navbar). I have app.blade.php that contains the header html and #yield('content'). The only way I can think of querying out the categories is somehow putting it in my routes files... which I'm pretty sure is not the way to go.
I'm hoping to get suggestions / examples.

Answer 1

As described in the Laravel documentation, you can use a wildcard view composer to accomplish this.
First you would set up a service provider for view composers, with a closure-based composer that will apply to every page (the * wildcard symbol):
<?php namespace App\Providers;
use View;
use Illuminate\Support\ServiceProvider;
class ComposerServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider {
/**
* Register bindings in the container.
*
* #return void
*/
public function boot()
{
View::composer('*', function($view)
{
//
});
}
/**
* Register
*
* #return void
*/
public function register()
{
//
}
}
Then you'll need to add the service provider to the providers array in config/app.php. This will register this service provider so that the view composer is called on every page load.
Then you can bind a collection of all Categories to all views by adding it to the wildcard view composer like so:
public function boot()
{
View::composer('*', function($view)
{
$view->with('categories', \App\Categories::all());
});
}

Answer 2

One solution is to use Laravel View Composers to bind data to a view.

Answer 3

all, what #jakeOpena says is true, View Composers is the best solution.
here is my example from route.php :
View::composer('layouts.left_navbar_menu', function($view) {
$menu = App::make('LeftNavMenu')->menuBilder();
$view->with('name', $menu);
});
my view "layouts/left_navbar_menu" is included in master template, like this:
#include('layouts.boot_left_navbar_menu')