Bookmark an article in Laravel - php

Question

I am trying to create a functionality for a user to be able to bookmark and article and remove the article from his bookmarks as well. The functionality to bookmark an article works just fine, but when I try to remove the article from the bookmarks then it does not work and instead it inserts the same record but with the article_id being NULL.
Here is my controller:
public function postBookmark() {
$user_id = Auth::user()->id;
$article_id = Input::get('id');
$bookmark = Bookmark::where('user_id', '=', $user_id)->where('article_id', '=', $article_id);
$article = Article::where('id', '=', $article_id);
$article = $article->first();
// I want to check if the article has been already bookmarked by the same user
// but this if statement always returns true
if(!empty($bookmark)) {
$bookmark = Bookmark::create(array(
'user_id' => $user_id,
'article_id' => $article_id,
));
if($bookmark) {
return View::make('article.view')
->with('article', $article)
->with('bookmarked', true);
}
} else {
// Does not work
$bookmark->delete();
return View::make('article.view')
->with('article', $article)
->with('bookmarked', false);
}
return Redirect::route('article-all')
->with('global', 'We were unable to bookmark the article. Please, try again later.');
}
And here is part of my view:
{{ Form::open(array('action' => 'BookmarkController#postBookmark')) }}
<input
type="checkbox"
name="id"
onClick="this.form.submit()"
value="{{ $article->id }}"
id="bookmark"
{{ $bookmarked ? 'checked' : '' }}
/>
<label for="bookmark">Bookmark</label>
{{ Form::close() }}
I do also have a route with a post method for this functionality. I would highly appreciate if anyone could give any idea of why it does not work.

Answer 1

You are not executing your bookmark query.
The $boomark variable in your code example is a Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder object and empty($boomark) will return always false because there is a object stored.
To execute a query you can use get() for example. In your case you want only one result, then you use first() to retrieve the first found bookmark object.
Change:
$bookmark = Bookmark::where('user_id', '=', $user_id)->where('article_id', '=', $article_id);
To this:
$bookmark = Bookmark::where('user_id', '=', $user_id)->where('article_id', '=', $article_id)->first();
Then it should work fine.

Answer 2

If you really want, changing the condition if(!empty($bookmark)) to if ($bookmark->count()) { might do the trick, but it will do another query with COUNT() to the DB and it is not really a good way of doing it.
The problem is with if(!empty($bookmark)), because $bookmark has a QueryBuilder instance, it will never be empty.
The preferred way would be using Eloquent model relations. With relationships you could check by Article::has('bookmark') for instance.

Answer 3

Thanks for the help. I ended up using both of your solutions.
public function postBookmark() {
$user_id = Auth::id();
$article_id = Input::get('id');
$bookmark = User::find($user_id)->bookmarks()->where('article_id', '=', $article_id)->first();
if(empty($bookmark)) {
$bookmark = Bookmark::create(array(
'user_id' => $user_id,
'article_id' => $article_id,
));
if($bookmark) {
return Redirect::route('article-get', array('article_id' => $article_id));
}
} else {
$bookmark->delete();
return Redirect::route('article-get', array('article_id' => $article_id));
}
return Redirect::route('article-all')
->with('global', 'We were unable to bookmark the article. Please, try again later.');
}
Nonetheless, what I really needed to fix was my view. For some reason the id of my input was not being submitted properly, so I ended up creating a hidden field for it as well.
{{ Form::open(array('action' => 'BookmarkController#postBookmark')) }}
<input
type="checkbox"
name="id"
onClick="this.form.submit()"
value="{{ $article->id }}"
id="bookmark"
{{ $bookmarked ? 'checked' : '' }}
/>
<input
type="hidden"
name="id"
value="{{ $article->id }}"
/>
<label for="bookmark">Bookmark</label>
{{ Form::close() }}