Serialize Laravel Query Builder

Question

I would like to be able to construct a query using laravel, and serialize it into a url string. This would allow me to create routes which would unserialize a query builder, run the query, and make a view which displays the database results.

For example, to implement a button which refreshes a list of posts made by kryo:

http://example.com/ajax/posts.php?name=kryo&order_by=created_at&order_type=desc

Posts.php would simply be a route which unserializes, validates, and runs the query in the url params, and provides the results to a view.

Perhaps this is not useful in general, but I would personally find it handy specifically for ajax requests. If anyone knows how to implement this as a laravel plugin of some nature, that would be fantastic.

Answer 1

I'll try to give you a basic idea:

In Laravel you have to create a route to make a request to a function/method, so at first you need to create a route which will be listening for the ajax request, for example:

Route::get('/ajax/posts', array('uses' => 'PostController@index', 'as' => 'showPosts'));

Now, create a link in the view which points to this route, to create a link you may try this:

$url = to_route('showPosts');

If you use something like this:

<a class='ajaxPost' href="{{ $url }}?name=kryo&order_by=created_at&order_type=desc">Get Posts</a>

It'll create a ink to that route. So, make sure you are able to pass that $url to your JavaScript or manually you can write the url using /ajax/posts?name=.... Once you done creating the link then you need to create your JavaScript handler for this link (maybe using click event) then handle the click event from your handler, make ajax request, if it's jQuery then it could be something like this:

$('.ajaxPost').on('clcik', function(e){
    e.preventDefault();
    var url = $(this).attar('href');
    $.getJSON(url, function(response){
        $.each(response, function(key, value){
            // loop... you may use $(this) or value
        });
    });
});

In your PostController controller class, create the index method:

class PostController extends BaseController {

    public function index()
    {
        $name = Input::get('name');
        $order_by = Input::get('order_by');
        $created_at = Input::get('created_at');
        $order_type = Input::get('order_type');

        $posts = Post::whereName($name)->orderBy($order_by, $order_type)->get();
        if(Request::ajax()) {
            return Response::json($posts);
        }
        else {
            // return a view for non ajax
        }
    }
}

If you want to send a rendered view from the server side to your JavaScript handler as HTML then change the getJson to get and instead of return Response::json($posts); use

return View::make('viewname')->with('posts', $posts);

In this case make sure that, your view doesn't extends the master layout. This may not be what you need but it gives you the idea how you can implement it.