How to persist checked items across pagination requests in Laravel? - php

Question

I have a form where I show some items, which can be selected by the user.
There are over 1000 items so I'm using pagination.
What would be the best way to persist the checked items, when user go to the next page?
To store all these items in hidden fields wouldn't be an option, because they are to much items.
My View:
#foreach($articles['uncommitted'] as $article)
<tr>
<td><input type="checkbox" name="articles[]"></td>
<td>{{{$article->articlename}}}</td>
<td>{{{$article->category->catname}}}</td>
<td>{{{strftime('%d.%m.%Y %H:%M', strtotime($article->created_at))}}
<td>{{{$article->rrp}}}</td>>created_at))}}}</td>
</tr>
#endforeach
{{$links}}
This form will be paginated.

Answer 1

As far as I understand you are facing two problems: persisting the checked items across pagination request, and retrieving the checked items back to the view.
To persist the checked items across pagination request, I would flash the checked items into the Session. The controller method will look something as follows.
public function fill_form()
{
$items = Item::paginate(25);
// Retrieve checked items in session.
$checked_items = []
if (Session::has('checked_items'))
$checked_items = Session::get('checked_items');
// Persist new checked items.
$checked_items = array_merge($checked_items, Input::get('item'));
Session::flash('checked_items', $checked_items);
return View::make('form')
->with('items', $items);
}
As you can see the checked items will be available in the session within pagination requests.
Now for the case to display the checked items back to the view I would send the checked items in session to the view via old input. That said, the return value would be changed as follows.
public function fill_form()
{
# code intentionally omitted #
return View::make('form')
->with('items', $items)
->withInput($checked_items);
}
Then in your views the checked items will persist their checked value. Obviously, you should use Laravel to generate your checkboxes.
How to get all item (checked or not) on submit?
Maybe, if you are render items with checkboxes you will need to know which of those checkboxes were checked and which not when paginating. A simply solution will be adding an extra input hidden field for each checkbox with a default value, it will look as follows:
{{ Form::hidden('item1', 'off') }}
{{ Form::checkbox('item1', 'on') }}
{{ Form::hidden('item2', 'off') }}
{{ Form::checkbox('item2', 'on') }}
{{ Form::hidden('item3', 'off') }}
{{ Form::checkbox('item3', 'on') }}
After submitting the form, when paginating, for checked item you will receive the expected value, for those not checked you will receive the hidden value.
Note 1, it is important to put the hidden input before each checkbox.
Note 2, each hidden input should have the same name as the checkbox.

Answer 2

Unless I misunderstood your question, I think what you're looking for is caching: http://four.laravel.com/docs/cache
Here's an excerpt from the docs:
Database Cache
When using the database cache driver, you will need to setup a table to contain the cache items. Below is an example Schema declaration for the table:
Schema::create('cache', function($table)
{
$table->string('key')->unique();
$table->text('value');
$table->integer('expiration');
});
If you're wanting to store form data across requests, then you'll want to use Session - excerpt from the docs (http://four.laravel.com/docs/session):
Database Sessions
When using the database session driver, you will need to setup a table to contain the session items. Below is an example Schema declaration for the table:
Schema::create('sessions', function($table)
{
$table->string('id')->unique();
$table->text('payload');
$table->integer('last_activity');
});