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      Eloquent

      How To Limit and Paginate Query Results in Laravel Eloquent



      Part of the Series:
      A Practical Introduction to Laravel Eloquent ORM

      Eloquent is an object relational mapper (ORM) that is included by default within the Laravel framework. In this project-based series, you’ll learn how to make database queries and how to work with relationships in Laravel Eloquent. To follow along with the examples demonstrated throughout the series, you’ll improve a demo application with new models and relationships. Visit the series introduction page for detailed instructions on how to download and set up the project.

      Throughout this series, you have been adding new links to your demo application to test out several features from Laravel Eloquent. You may have noticed that the main index page is getting longer each time you add a new link, since there is no limit to the number of links shown in the application. Although that won’t be an issue when you have a small number of database entries, in the long term that might result in longer loading times for your page, and a layout that is more difficult to read due to the amount of content spread in a single page.

      In this part of the series, you’ll learn how to limit the number of results in a Laravel Eloquent query with the limit() method, and how to paginate results with the simplePaginate() method.

      Limiting Query Results

      To get started, you’ll update your main application route (/) to limit the number of links that are listed on your index page.

      Start by opening your web routes file in your code editor:

      routes/web.php
      

      Then, locate the main route definition:

      routes/web.php

      Route::get('/', function () {
          $links = Link::all()->sortDesc();
          return view('index', [
              'links' => $links,
              'lists' => LinkList::all()
          ]);
      });
      

      The highlighted line shows the query that obtains all links currently in the database, through the Link model all() method. As explained in a previous part of this series, this method is inherited from the parent Model class, and returns a collection with all database records associated with that model. The sortDesc() method is used to sort the resulting collection in descending order.

      You’ll now change the highlighted line to use the database query sorting method orderBy(), which orders query results at the database level, instead of simply reordering the full set of rows that is returned as an Eloquent Collection via the all() method. You’ll also include a chained call to the limit() method in order to limit the query results. Finally, you’ll use the get() method to obtain the filtered resultset as an Eloquent Collection.

      Replace your main route with the following code. The change is highlighted for your convenience:

      routes/web.php

      Route::get('/', function () {
          $links = Link::orderBy('created_at', 'desc')->limit(4)->get();
      
          return view('index', [
              'links' => $links,
              'lists' => LinkList::all()
          ]);
      });
      

      The updated code will now pull the latest 4 links added to the database, no matter at which list. Because all links are added to lists, visitors can still go to specific lists to see the full list of links.

      Next, you’ll learn how to paginate results to make sure all links are still accessible, even though they don’t load all at once on a single page.

      Paginating Query Results

      Your index page now limits the number of links that are listed, so that your page isn’t overloaded with content, and gets rendered in a shorter amount of time. While this solution works well in many cases, you’ll need to make sure visitors can still access older links that aren’t visible by default. The most effective way to do so is by implementing a pagination where users can navigate between multiple pages of results.

      Laravel Eloquent has native methods to facilitate implementing pagination on database query results. The paginate() and simplePaginate() methods take care of generating pagination links, handling HTTP parameters to identify which page is currently being requested, and querying the database with the correct limit and offset in order to obtain the expected set of results, depending on the number of records per page you want to list.

      You’ll now update the Eloquent queries in routes/web.php to use the simplePaginate() method, which generates a basic navigation with previous and next links. Unlike the paginate() method, simplePaginate() doesn’t show information about the total number of pages in a query result.

      Open the routes/web.php file in your code editor. Start by updating the / route, replacing the limit(4)->get() method call with the simplePaginate() method:

      routes/web.php

      ...
      Route::get('/', function () {
          $links = Link::orderBy('created_at', 'desc')->simplePaginate(4);
      
          return view('index', [
              'links' => $links,
              'lists' => LinkList::all()
          ]);
      });
      ...
      

      Next, locate the /{slug} route definition in the same file, and replace the get() method with the simplePaginate() method. This is how the code should look once you’re done:

      routes/web.php

      ...
      Route::get('/{slug}', function ($slug) {
          $list = LinkList::where('slug', $slug)->first();
          if (!$list) {
              abort(404);
          }
      
          return view('index', [
              'list' => $list,
              'links' => $list->links()->orderBy('created_at', 'desc')->simplePaginate(4),
              'lists' => LinkList::all()
          ]);
      })->name('link-list');
      ...
      

      This is how the finished routes/web.php file will look once you’re finished. The changes are highlighted for your convenience:

      routes/web.php

      <?php
      
      use IlluminateSupportFacadesRoute;
      use AppModelsLink;
      use AppModelsLinkList;
      
      /*
      |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
      | Web Routes
      |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
      |
      | Here is where you can register web routes for your application. These
      | routes are loaded by the RouteServiceProvider within a group which
      | contains the "web" middleware group. Now create something great!
      |
      */
      
      Route::get('/', function () {
          $links = Link::orderBy('created_at', 'desc')->simplePaginate(4);
      
          return view('index', [
              'links' => $links,
              'lists' => LinkList::all()
          ]);
      });
      
      Route::get('/{slug}', function ($slug) {
          $list = LinkList::where('slug', $slug)->first();
          if (!$list) {
              abort(404);
          }
      
          return view('index', [
              'list' => $list,
              'links' => $list->links()->orderBy('created_at', 'desc')->simplePaginate(4),
              'lists' => LinkList::all()
          ]);
      })->name('link-list');
      
      

      Save the file when you’re done.

      The database queries are now updated, but you still need to update your front end view to include code that will render the navigation bar. The resulting Eloquent collection obtained with simplePaginate() contains a method called links(), which can be called from the front end view to output the necessary HTML code that will render a navigation section based on a paginated Eloquent query.

      You can also use the links() method in a paginated Eloquent collection to access the inherent paginator object, which provides several helpful methods to obtain information about the content such as the current page and whether there are multiple pages of content or not.

      Open the resources/views/index.blade.php application view in your code editor:

      resources/views/index.blade.php
      

      Locate the end of the section tagged with the links class, which contains a foreach loop where links are rendered. Place the following piece of code after that section and before the final </div> tag on that page:

      resources/views/index.blade.php

              @if ($links->links()->paginator->hasPages())
                  <div class="mt-4 p-4 box has-text-centered">
                      {{ $links->links() }}
                  </div>
              @endif
      

      This code checks for the existence of multiple pages of results by accessing the paginator object and calling the hasPages() method. When that method returns true, the page renders a new div element and calls the links() method to print the navigation links for the related Eloquent query.

      This is how the updated index.blade.php page will look like once you’re finished:

      resources/views/index.blade.php

      <!DOCTYPE html>
      <html>
      <head>
          <meta charset="utf-8">
          <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
          <title>My Awesome Links</title>
          <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/[email protected]/css/bulma.min.css">
      
          <style>
              html {
                  background: url("https://i.imgur.com/BWIdYTM.jpeg") no-repeat center center fixed;
                  -webkit-background-size: cover;
                  -moz-background-size: cover;
                  -o-background-size: cover;
                  background-size: cover;
              }
      
              div.link h3 {
                  font-size: large;
              }
      
              div.link p {
                  font-size: small;
                  color: #718096;
              }
          </style>
      </head>
      <body>
      <section class="section">
          <div class="container">
              <h1 class="title">
                  @if (isset($list))
                      {{ $list->title }}
                  @else
                      Check out my awesome links
                  @endif
              </h1>
              <p class="subtitle">
                  @foreach ($lists as $list)<a href="{{ route('link-list', $list->slug) }}" title="{{ $list->title }}" class="tag is-info is-light">{{ $list->title }} ({{ $list->links()->count() }})</a> @endforeach
              </p>
      
              <section class="links">
                  @foreach ($links as $link)
                      <div class="box link">
                          <h3><a href="{{ $link->url }}" target="_blank" title="Visit Link: {{ $link->url }}">{{ $link->description }}</a></h3>
                          <p>{{$link->url}}</p>
                          <p class="mt-2"><a href="{{ route('link-list', $link->link_list->slug) }}" title="{{ $link->link_list->title }}" class="tag is-info">{{ $link->link_list->title }}</a></p>
                      </div>
                  @endforeach
              </section>
      
              @if ($links->links()->paginator->hasPages())
                  <div class="mt-4 p-4 box has-text-centered">
                      {{ $links->links() }}
                  </div>
              @endif
          </div>
      </section>
      </body>
      </html>
      

      Save the file when you’re done updating it. If you go back to your browser window and reload the application page now, you’ll notice a new navigation bar whenever you have more than 4 links in the general listing or in any individual link list page.

      Updated application Landing Laravel with content pagination

      With a functional pagination in place, you can grow your content while making sure that older items are still accessible to users and search engines. In cases where you need only a fixed amount of results based on a certain criteria, where pagination is not necessary, you can use the limit() method to simplify your query and guarantee a limited result set.

      This tutorial is part of an ongoing weekly series about Laravel Eloquent. You can subscribe to the Laravel tag if you want to be notified when new tutorials are published.



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      How To Get Total Result Count in Laravel Eloquent



      Part of the Series:
      A Practical Introduction to Laravel Eloquent ORM

      Eloquent is an object relational mapper (ORM) that is included by default within the Laravel framework. In this project-based series, you’ll learn how to make database queries and how to work with relationships in Laravel Eloquent. To practice the examples explained throughout the series, you’ll improve a demo application with new models and relationships.

      When working with database query results, it is often useful to obtain only the total number of rows in a result set, instead of pulling the full dataset content with a regular query. Eloquent offers a few different aggregate methods that return a scalar number instead of an Eloquent object, including count(), max(), and sum(), among others. These are all made available through the inherent query builder that is built into every Eloquent model.

      In this part of the series, you’ll update the main application view to show the total number of links in each list.

      Open the file resources/views/index.php in your code editor:

      resources/views/index.php
      

      Locate the paragraph styled with the subtitle class, which contains the foreach loop that renders the application menu:

      ...
      <p class="subtitle">
           @foreach ($lists as $list)<a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/{{ route("link-list', $list->slug) }}" title="{{ $list->title }}" class="tag is-info is-light">{{ $list->title }}</a> @endforeach
      </p>
      ...
      

      To obtain the total number of links in each list, you can access the query builder from within the $list->links() relationship method defined on the LinkList class, and call the count() method that is available through the query builder:

      {{ $list->links()->count() }}
      

      Update the code inside the foreach loop to include the count() method call, which will display the number of links in a list. Make sure to place it inside the <a> tag and right after the list title. You can wrap this information inside a parenthesis for more readability in the rendered HTML output.

      This is how the code should look like once you are finished:

       <p class="subtitle">
            @foreach ($lists as $list)<a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/{{ route("link-list', $list->slug) }}" title="{{ $list->title }}" class="tag is-info is-light">{{ $list->title }} ({{ $list->links()->count() }})</a> @endforeach
       </p>
      

      Save the file when you’re finished. Then, reload the main application page on your browser:

      http://localhost:8000
      

      You’ll obtain a page like the following, showing the total number of links included in each list, on the top menu:

      Updated application showing number of links in each link on the top menu

      In the next part of this series, you’ll learn how to limit the number of results in a query, and how to paginate results in Laravel Eloquent.

      This tutorial is part of an ongoing weekly series about Laravel Eloquent. You can subscribe to the Laravel tag if you want to be notified when new tutorials are published.



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      How To Order Query Results in Laravel Eloquent



      Part of the Series:
      A Practical Introduction to Laravel Eloquent ORM

      Eloquent is an object relational mapper (ORM) that is included by default within the Laravel framework. In this project-based series, you’ll learn how to make database queries and how to work with relationships in Laravel Eloquent. To practice the examples explained throughout the series, you’ll improve a demo application with new models and relationships.

      In a previous part of this series, you learned how to obtain database records using the all() method from within an Eloquent model. You may recall using a method called sortDesc(), which was used to sort the records in descending order.

      The sortDesc() method is part of the Collection class, a powerful Laravel utility class that works as an improved version of native PHP arrays. Instead of ordering results within the database query itself, this method will invert the order of a collection, so that the last item appears first in the collection. While that works well for smaller result sets, it doesn’t offer the same flexibility as sorting the results in the database query itself.

      To sort results in the database query, you’ll need to use the orderBy() method, and provide the table field you want to use as criteria for ordering. This will give you more flexibility to build a query that will obtain only the results you need from the database.

      You’ll now change the code in your routes/web.php file to show results ordered from newest to oldest, based on the created_at table field.

      Both the created_at and the updated_at fields are managed by Eloquent when you include a timestamps() definition in your table migration. You should not update these fields manually, but you can use them to sort and filter your queries.

      Open this file in your code editor:

      routes/web.php
      

      This is how the code looks like now:

      routes/web.php

      <?php
      
      use IlluminateSupportFacadesRoute;
      use AppModelsLink;
      use AppModelsLinkList;
      
      /*
      |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
      | Web Routes
      |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
      |
      | Here is where you can register web routes for your application. These
      | routes are loaded by the RouteServiceProvider within a group which
      | contains the "web" middleware group. Now create something great!
      |
      */
      
      Route::get('/', function () {
          $links = Link::all()->sortDesc();
          return view('index', [
              'links' => $links,
              'lists' => LinkList::all()
          ]);
      });
      
      Route::get('/{slug}', function ($slug) {
          $list = LinkList::where('slug', $slug)->first();
          if (!$list) {
              abort(404);
          }
      
          return view('index', [
              'list' => $list,
              'links' => $list->links,
              'lists' => LinkList::all()
          ]);
      })->name('link-list');
      
      

      Notice that the /{slug} route, which is responsible for listing the links by slug, currently doesn’t use any sorting method. Links are obtained through the list variable, highlighted in the code, using the relationship defined in the LinkList model.

      If you add multiple links to a list now, the query will return results ordered from oldest to newest by default. Although you could use the sortDesc() method to reorder the collection within the $list->links call, using the orderBy() method provides more flexibility and allows you to include additional filtering conditions later. You can chain this method with a where() call for even more fine-grained results.

      Replace the highlighted line in the previous code sample with the following line:

      routes/web.php

      'links' => $list->links()->orderBy('created_at', 'desc')->get(),
      

      Notice that this time we’re invoking the built-in query builder by calling the $list->links() method, which refers to the relationship method defined in the LinkList class. This is different from calling $list->links as a class property (without the parenthesis), which will invoke a magic method in the model to fetch all links related to that list.

      This is how the full routes/web.php file should look like once you’re finished:

      routes/web.php

      <?php
      
      use IlluminateSupportFacadesRoute;
      use AppModelsLink;
      use AppModelsLinkList;
      
      /*
      |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
      | Web Routes
      |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
      |
      | Here is where you can register web routes for your application. These
      | routes are loaded by the RouteServiceProvider within a group which
      | contains the "web" middleware group. Now create something great!
      |
      */
      
      Route::get('/', function () {
          $links = Link::all()->sortDesc();
          return view('index', [
              'links' => $links,
              'lists' => LinkList::all()
          ]);
      });
      
      Route::get('/{slug}', function ($slug) {
          $list = LinkList::where('slug', $slug)->first();
          if (!$list) {
              abort(404);
          }
      
          return view('index', [
              'list' => $list,
              'links' => $list->links()->orderBy('created_at', 'desc')->get(),
              'lists' => LinkList::all()
          ]);
      })->name('link-list');
      
      

      Save and close the file. Now, add a couple new links using the link:new Artisan command. You can use the default list:

      • docker-compose exec app php artisan link:new

      Output

      Link URL: > https://laravel.com/docs/8.x/eloquent Link Description: > Laravel Eloquent Docs Link List (leave blank to use default): > New Link: https://laravel.com/docs/8.x/eloquent - Laravel Eloquent Docs Listed in: default Is this information correct? (yes/no) [no]: > yes Saved.

      If you reload the default link list page, you should now obtain links from newest to oldest:

      http://localhost:8000/default
      

      Default Link List showing links ordered by creation date, in descending order - from newest to oldest

      Likewise, if you would prefer to order links alphabetically by the link description, you would have to change the line to use that table field in the method call like this:

      'links' => $list->links()->orderBy('description', 'asc')->get(),
      

      This is how the links would be ordered after such change:

      Default Link List showing links ordered alphabetically by link description

      In the next part of this series, you’ll learn how to obtain the total result count from a Laravel Eloquent query.

      This tutorial is part of an ongoing weekly series about Laravel Eloquent. You can subscribe to the Laravel tag if you want to be notified when new tutorials are published.



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