Laravel - Multi fields search form - php

Question

I'm builind a form with laravel to search users, this form has multiple fields like
Age (which is mandatory)
Hobbies (optional)
What the user likes (optional)
And some others to come
For the age, the user can select in the list (18+, 18-23,23-30, 30+ etc...) and my problem is that i would like to know how i can do to combine these fields into one single query that i return to the view.
For now, i have something like this :
if(Input::get('like')){
$users = User::where('gender', $user->interested_by)->has('interestedBy', Input::get('like'))->get();
if(strlen(Input::get('age')) == 3){
$input = substr(Input::get('age'),0, -1);
if(Input::get('age') == '18+' || Input::get('age') == '30+' )
{
foreach ($users as $user)
{
if($user->age($user->id) >= $input){
$result[] = $user;
// On enregistre les users étant supérieur au if plus haut
}
else
$result = [];
}
return view('search.result', ['users' => $result]);
}
elseif (strlen(Input::get('age')) == 5) {
$min = substr(Input::get('age'), 0, -3);
$max = substr(Input::get('age'), -2);
$result = array();
foreach($users as $user)
{
if($user->age($user->id) >= $min && $user->age($user->id) <= $max)
$result[] = $user;
}
return view('search.result', ['users' => $result]);
}
}
else
$users = User::all();
And so the problem is that there is gonna be 2 or 3 more optional fields coming and i would like to query for each input if empty but i don't know how to do it, i kept the age at the end because it's mandatory but i don't know if it's the good thing to do.
Actually this code works for now, but if i had an other field i don't know how i can do to query for each input, i know that i have to remove the get in my where and do it at the end but i wanna add the get for the last query..
Edit: my models :
User.php
public function interestedBy()
{
return $this->belongsToMany('App\InterestedBy');
}
And the same in InterestedBy.php
class InterestedBy extends Model{
/**
* The database table used by the model.
*
* #var string
*/
protected $table = 'interested_by';
public function users()
{
return $this->belongsToMany('App\User');
}
}

Answer 1

you can use query builer to do this as follow
$userBuilder = User::where(DB::raw('1')); //this will return builder object to continue with the optional things
// if User model object injected using ioc container $user->newQuery() will return blank builder object
$hobbies = Request::input('hobbies') // for laravel 5
if( !empty($hobbies) )
{
$userBuilder = $userBuilder->whereIn('hobbies',$hobbies) //$hobbies is array
}
//other fields so on
$users = $userBuilder->get();
//filter by age
$age = Request::input('age');
$finalRows = $users->filter(function($q) use($age){
return $q->age >= $age; //$q will be object of User
});
//$finalRows will hold the final collection which will have only ages test passed in the filter

Answer 2

A way you could possible do this is using query scopes (more about that here) and then check if the optional fields have inputs.
Here is an example
Inside your User Model
//Just a few simple examples to get the hang of it.
public function scopeSearchAge($query, $age)
{
return $query->where('age', '=', $age);
});
}
public function scopeSearchHobby($query, $hobby)
{
return $query->hobby()->where('hobby', '=', $hobby);
});
}
Inside your Controller
public function search()
{
$queryBuilder = User::query();
if (Input::has('age'))
{
$queryBuilder ->searchAge(Input::get('age'));
}
if (Input::has('hobby'))
{
$queryBuilder->searchHobby(Input::get('hobby'));
}
$users= $queryBuilder->get();
}