How to implement search functionality in laravel 8 and laravel 7 downwards

#php #html #webdev #laravel

Today, I am going to drop a simple hint, how to implement search functionality in your crud app, this will allow you to just get a specific item or items that have a similar name from the search result in a list of hundreds or even thousands of data from the database.
I am going to modify our index method from our previous app Laravel 8 CRUD, in case you just need the code, you can get it from the GitHub repo.

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Step 1: Modify the index method in the project controller

Add Request $request as a parameter to the Index method
Edit the query to get all the projects
- In the first parameter for our “where” clause, we are going to only query the projects that the name is not null.
- In the second parameter, we are going to query the projects that the request is bringing, in our case where the request is similar to the name of the project.
- You can choose to order how your search results show up, I order mine according to the descending order of id.

Step 2: add the form that will send the request to the controller in index.blade.php

I added the following

An input tag (where the user will enter the text to search).
A submit button (This will trigger the search functionality after the text has been added).
Another button to refresh our search result. ```

                <div class="input-group">
                    <span class="input-group-btn mr-5 mt-1">
                        <button class="btn btn-info" type="submit" title="Search projects">
                            <span class="fas fa-search"></span>
                        </button>
                    </span>
                    <input type="text" class="form-control mr-2" name="term" placeholder="Search projects" id="term">
                    <a href="{{ route('projects.index') }}" class=" mt-1">
                        <span class="input-group-btn">
                            <button class="btn btn-danger" type="button" title="Refresh page">
                                <span class="fas fa-sync-alt"></span>
                            </button>
                        </span>
                    </a>
                </div>
            </form>
        </div>
    </div>
</div>

That is all, this is our result below
**all the projects in the database**
![complete projects](https://res.cloudinary.com/kingsconsult/image/upload/v1601378044/laravel%208%20search%20functionality/2_lxfhey.png)
**only projects with laravel in the name**
![only projects with laravel](https://res.cloudinary.com/kingsconsult/image/upload/v1601378044/laravel%208%20search%20functionality/3_vnhxwh.png)
**only projects with mana in the name**
![only projects with mana](https://res.cloudinary.com/kingsconsult/image/upload/v1601378044/laravel%208%20search%20functionality/4_n2x9qg.png)
**only projects with 1 in the name**
![only projects with 1](https://res.cloudinary.com/kingsconsult/image/upload/v1601378044/laravel%208%20search%20functionality/5_tntdvx.png)


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Top comments (9)

Mohammed Samgan Khan • Oct 1 '20

nice article. good job.
but a much easier way can be as follows.

public function index()
{
        $project = Project::query();
        if (request('term')) {
            $project->where('name', 'Like', '%' . request('term') . '%');
        }

        return $project->orderBy('id', 'DESC')->paginate(10);
}

IN laravel you can break the query in pieces.

Favour Ezinne Arua • Sep 29 '20

Hi Kings, Love your article, it really helps.
I'm a beginner although not a total beginner(lol), I'm actually trying to accomplish this with Laravel 7, I'm working on a blog site(my first Laravel site actually), after doing all you said and replacing the projects with post for my own project, I'm getting an error of "Route [post.index] not defined, Please how can I solve this, waiting for your response, cheers

Kingsconsult • Sep 29 '20

you don't need to change your route from GET to POST, if you are using resource route, just add the Request $request to the index, it will work

Favour Ezinne Arua • Sep 30 '20

I didn't change the method, I'm still using get, I only changed where you had projects.index to posts.index because mine is a blog, I want the search to work users blog posts