laravel pass in optional form values - php

Question

I am new to laravel and trying to figure out how to do the following:
I have a route that looks like this:
Route::resource('users', 'UsersController');
and it uses a query like this:
public function show()
{
$users = DB::select('select * from users WHERE Active = "Y"');
return View::make('users.show')->with('users', $users);
}
And it shows fine. But above the results of the view, I have a form that allows someone to search by say first name or last name. I can not figure out how to do this in laravel. I am not sure if I need a different function that will expect those optional search parameters or if I can use the show function and just check for values?

Answer 1

Laravel strips all GET query parameters (/user?name=John) for security reasons, so you either have to use POST or pass them as route parameters (/user/John).
Using POST you'll have access to Input. You'll be able to provide default values like this:
Route::post('user', function()
{
return Input::get('name', 'John');
});
For route parameters you'll be able to define optional parameters like this:
Route::get('user/{name?}', function($name = 'John')
{
return $name;
});
You won't be able to use resource controllers with this, as they don't allow you to define custom endpoints, just the basic GET/POST by ID ones.
I know you don't like defining route handlers in the route definitions.
There's RESTful controllers for that.