Posting to the same form in laravel - php

Question

I'm trying to build a search form in Laravel such that when a user presses the search button, all the contacts matching the search criteria are displayed on the same page.
Below is my form:
{{ Form::open(array('url' => '/directory', 'class' => 'form-horizontal')) }}
<div class="form-group">
<label for="lastname" class="col-sm-2 control-label">Last Name</label>
<div class="col-sm-6">
<input type="text" class="form-control" id="lastname" placeholder="Enter Last Name">
</div>
</div>
<div class="form-group ">
<label for="phone" class="col-sm-2 control-label">Phone</label>
<div class="col-sm-6">
<input type="text" class="form-control" id="phone" placeholder="Enter Phone number">
</div>
</div>
<div class="form-group">
<label for="inputEmail1" class="col-sm-2 control-label">Email</label>
<div class="col-sm-6">
<input type="email" class="form-control" id="inputEmail1" placeholder="Enter Email - leave blank if you are not sure">
</div>
</div>
<div class="form-group">
<div class="col-lg-offset-2 col-lg-10">
<button type="submit" class="btn-u btn-u-green">Search</button>
</div>
</div>
<div class="well">
#foreach($users as $user)
<li>{{$user->firstname}} {{$user->lastname}}</li>
#endforeach
</div>
{{ Form::close() }}
The screenshot below gives a pictorial view of my form:
My route is defined as follow:
Route::get('/directory', 'UsersController#filter');
Now, whenever I press the search button, I am getting a MethodNotFound exception.
What I really want to do is to show the search results below the search button.
Edit ..
Everything is working fine now except for one thing.
I'm displaying the data in my view (getting the list of all the users on my page which match the search criteria) but the for loop is not getting executed.
<li>Count of users = {{ $users->count() }}</li>
<li>{{$users->first()->lastname}}</li>
#foreach ($users as $user)
<p>This is user {{ $user->id }}</p>
#endforeach
So: while I can see the count and the lastname of the first user in the resultant array of records, the foreach loop is not getting executed.
What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Laravel routes are bound to the form METHOD, so you need to create also a POST route:
Route::post('/directory', 'UsersController#filter');
You also need to add names to your form fields:
name="lastname"
for
<input type="text" name="lastname" class="form-control" id="lastname" placeholder="Enter Last Name">
And for all the others.
A controller method to handle that query could look like this:
<?php
class UsersController extends Controller {
public function filter()
{
$users = User::query();
if (Input::has('lastname'))
{
$users->where('lastname', Input::get('lastname'))
}
if (Input::has('phone'))
{
$users->where('phone', Input::get('phone'))
}
return View::make('your.view')
->with('userCount', $users->count());
->with('users', $users->get());
}
}
And in your view you can just:
<li>Count of users = {{$userCount}}</li>
#foreach ($users as $user)
<li>
{{ $user->id }} - {{$user->lastname}}
</li>
#endforeach

Answer 2

You have to tell Laravel that you want to use get method for submitting a form to the server. otherwise, Laravel will use post method by default.
Try the following:
{{ Form::open(array('url' => '/directory', 'method' => 'get', 'class' => 'form-horizontal')) }}
^^^