Creating search functionality with Laravel 4

Question

I am trying to create a way for users to search through all the products on a website. When they search for "burton snowboards", I only want the snowboards with the brand burton to appear in the results. But if they searched only "burton", then all products with the brand burton should appear.

This is what I have attempted to write but isn't working for multiple reasons.

Controller:

 public function search(){
    $input = Input::all();

    $v= Validator::make($input, Product::$rules);

    if($v->passes())
    {

        $searchTerms = explode(' ', $input);
        $searchTermBits = array();
        foreach ($searchTerms as $term) {
            $term = trim($term);
            if (!empty($term)){
                $searchTermBits[] = "search LIKE '%$term%'";
            }
        }
        $result = DB::table('products')
        ->select('*')
        ->whereRaw(". implode(' AND ', $searchTermBits) . ")
        ->get();

        return View::make('layouts/search', compact('result')); 
    }
    return Redirect::route('/');    
}

I am trying to recreate the first solution given for this stackoverflow.com problem

The first problem I have identified is that i'm trying to explode the $input, but it's already an array. So i'm not sure how to go about fixing that. And the way I have written the ->whereRaw(". implode(' AND ', $searchTermBits) . "), i'm sure isn't correct. I'm not sure how to fix these problems though, any insights or solutions will be greatly appreciated.

afarazit · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-22 17:56:43Z

18

You'll need to get the terms from your input field and loop through all of them while building your DB query. You'll also need to set the table field in which you want the terms to be searched, in this the example the table field is name. Here's an untested example but you'll get the idea.

public function search() {

    $q = Input::get('myInputField');

    $searchTerms = explode(' ', $q);

    $query = DB::table('products');

    foreach($searchTerms as $term)
    {
        $query->where('name', 'LIKE', '%'. $term .'%');
    }

    $results = $query->get();

}

edited Feb 22, 2014 at 17:56

answered Oct 26, 2013 at 21:50

afarazit

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4 Comments

Mitch Over a year ago

I have a field called search that has a trigger that auto combines several key fields such as name, brand, type, year, ect. This way there is only one field to search through. I want the query to essentially break down to: SELECT * FROM products WHERE search LIKE '%burton%' AND search LIKE '%snowboards%' Is this not the correct way to go about this?

afarazit Over a year ago

@MitchGlenn have you tested the code? There's a $query inside the foreach loop that does exactly what you say in your comment. Chainable where()'s build AND queries. You can see the queries produced by doing dd(DB::getQueryLog())

Samuel De Backer Over a year ago

Should be DB::table(…) without 's'

m33bo Over a year ago

How can you sanitate this query? I mean to insure, that the db term being searched is not actually another call to give permissions to a new user for example?

Nicolás López · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-30 15:48:52Z

6

I made a plugin for laravel to make this! Hope you use it and give feedback. You can specify the relevance for each column and use information from other tables

https://github.com/nicolaslopezj/searchable

You can search like this

$products = Product::search($query)->get();

edited Oct 30, 2014 at 15:48

answered Aug 22, 2014 at 3:41

Nicolás López

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Comments

Qamar Uzman · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-19 11:28:14Z

Controller Function 1

 public function search() {
    $q           = Input::get('searchKeyWords');
    $users       = DB::table('users');
        $results = $users->where('name', 'LIKE', '%'. $q .'%')
        ->orWhere('email', 'LIKE', '%'. $q .'%')
        ->orWhere('password', 'LIKE', '%'. $q .'%')
        ->get();
    return View::make('users.search')->with('users', $results);
}

Controller Function 2

 public function search() {
    $q = Input::get('searchKeyWords');
        $results = User::where('name', 'LIKE', '%'. $q .'%')
        ->orWhere('email', 'LIKE', '%'. $q .'%')
        ->orWhere('password', 'LIKE', '%'. $q .'%')
        ->get();
    return View::make('users.search')->with('users', $results);
}

Controller Function 3

public function search() {
        $results = User::where('name', 'LIKE', '%'. Input::get('searchKeyWords') .'%')
        ->orWhere('email', 'LIKE', '%'. Input::get('searchKeyWords') .'%')
        ->orWhere('password', 'LIKE', '%'. Input::get('searchKeyWords') .'%')
        ->get();
    return View::make('users.search')->with('users', $results);
}

Josh Crozier · Accepted Answer · 2015-12-12 02:34:54Z

1

This is sample when I try using Eloquent with many search terms

public function search() {

    $q = Input::get('myInputField');

    $searchTerms = explode(' ', $q);

    $query = $article->where('title', 'LIKE', "%{$keyword}%")
             ->orWhere('description', 'LIKE', "%{$keyword}%");

    foreach($searchTerms as $term)
    {
        $query = $query->orWhere('name', 'LIKE', '%'. $term .'%');
    }

    $results = $query->get();

}

You can also change ->get() function to other results like ->paginate(), and it should be like $results = $query->paginate(10);

edited Dec 12, 2015 at 2:34

Josh Crozier

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answered Mar 2, 2014 at 22:05

Aditya Kresna Permana

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