Laravel - Search Facility on site using Eloquent - php

Question

I'm a laravel newbie!!! And struggling to find out how to create a search and return the results.
Here's all my code on gist https://gist.github.com/anonymous/8289692
I've put everything in the gist from the form to the route, the controller and the model!
/* Route */
Route::get('/search/{q}', 'HomeController#search');
/* Form from web page */
<form class="navbar-form navbar-left" role="search" action="/search/" method="post">
<div class="input-group">
<input type="text" class="form-control" placeholder="Search Programmes" name="1">
<span class="input-group-btn">
<input type="submit" class="btn btn-primary" value="Search">
</span>
</div><!-- /input-group -->
</form>
/* Controller */
public function search($q)
{
$q = Input::get('term');
$searchTerms = explode(' ', $q);
$query = DB::tables('wc_program');
foreach($searchTerms as $term)
{
$query->where('JobRef', 'LIKE', '%'. $term .'%');
}
$results = $query->get();
}
/* Model (just in case) */
class Search extends Eloquent {
protected $table = 'wc_program';
public $timestamps = false;
}

Answer 1

There are some issues in your code:
Your form is using POST method, but your route is a GET route. And this accounts for the NotFoundHttpException. So make your route like:
Route::post('search', 'HomeController#search');
There's no need for a parameter, since your catching it with POST anyway, not GET!
Your input doesn't have the name 'term', but '1'. That might be a typo, but anyway, make it so:
<input type="text" class="form-control" placeholder="Search Programmes" name="term">
Also, I suggest using Laravel's URL methods to build a correct url:
<form class="navbar-form navbar-left" role="search" action="{{URL::to('search')}}" method="post">
Or better:
{{Form::open(array('url' => 'search', 'class' => 'navbar-form navbar-left', 'role' => 'search')}}
Now, to the controller. Let's rewrite to suite the new route:
public function search() //no parameter now
{
$q = Input::get('term');
if($q && $q != ''){
$searchTerms = explode(' ', $q);
$query = DB::table('wc_program'); // it's DB::table(), not DB::tables
if(!empty($searchTerms)){
foreach($searchTerms as $term) {
$query->where('JobRef', 'LIKE', '%'. $term .'%');
}
}
$results = $query->get();
dd($results); // for debugging purpose. Use a View here
}
}