Laravel 4 - Repopulating form for edit with multiple check boxes - php

Question

I'm having a hard time figuring out how to repopulate a form for edit that has check boxes in it. I think the most confusing part is because they are coming from a pivot table.
I have users, permissions, and users_permissions tables.
For a quick demonstration of what the tables look like, I ran this query and included a screen clip of the results.
return $userPermissions = User::with('permissions')->find($id);
In my form I just have two permissions check boxes for now until I get the concept working, then I will add a foreach loop and grab them all from the database, but now I have the following:
<div class="form-group">
<label>
{{ Form::hidden('permissions[4]', '0', ['class' => 'checkbox-inline']) }}
{{ Form::checkbox('permissions[4]', '1', ['class' => 'checkbox-inline']) }}
Manage Content
</label>
</div>
<div class="form-group">
<label>
{{ Form::hidden('permissions[3]', '0', ['class' => 'checkbox-inline']) }}
{{ Form::checkbox('permissions[3]', '1', ['class' => 'checkbox-inline']) }}
Manage Users
</label>
</div>
I'm not sure if this is useful information, but when I first create the user, I create a permissions array to attach to the new user. Here is the code for that,
public function createUserPermissionsArray($input)
{
$permissionsArray = [];
$permissions = $input['permissions'];
foreach ($permissions as $id => $value)
{
if ($value == 1)
{
array_push($permissionsArray, $id);
}
}
$this->saveNewUserToDatabase($input, $permissionsArray);
}
I really need some direction here about how to solve this problem. Thanks

Answer 1

I recently worked on something similar, except I had groups with permissions assigned to them, which users were then assigned to. For example, for GroupController::edit() I had this code:
public function edit($id)
{
if(!permitted('group.edit')) {
return Redirect::route('user.dashboard');
}
$group = Group::find($id);
$permissions = Permission::all();
return View::make('admin.group.edit', [
'group' => $group,
'permissions' => $permissions,
'assigned' => $group->permissions->lists('id')
]);
}
Then within the form partial for the view (admin.group.partials.form), I had the following code to handle permissions:
#foreach($permissions as $permission)
<div class="row">
#if(isset($assigned))
{{ Form::checkbox(
'permissions[' . $permission->ident .']',
$permission->id,
in_array($permission->id, $assigned))
}}<label for="permissions">{{ $permission->ident }} - {{ $permission->description }}</label>
#else
{{ Form::checkbox(
'permissions[' . $permission->ident .']',
$permission->id)
}}<label for="group">{{ $permission->ident }} - {{ $permission->description }}</label>
#endif
</div>
#endforeach
I've formatted it the best I can, so that it's easy to read. Basically I had a create.blade.php and edit.blade.php which both include the form partial, but each file handles the opening and closing of the form (model binding for edit, normal open for create), hence the if statement.
Unfortunately I couldn't find a better method to achieve this. I hope this helps you.
P.S: As a side note, I've actually written a tutorial about creating a robust and simple ACL with Laravel, I can link if you'd like.