Simple Laravel Database Search

README.md

This is a simple trait for database searching.

Model

Our model should of course use the Searchable trait. Likewise, we have to declare the model attributes which shall be searchable.

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use App\Traits\Searchable;

class User extends Model
{
    use Searchable;

    /**
     * The attributes that are searchable.
     *
     * @var array
     */
    protected $searchable = [
        'name',
        'email',
    ];
}

We could also make relationships' attributes searchable:

/**
 * The attributes that are searchable.
 *
 * @var array
 */
protected $searchable = [
    'name',
    'email',
    'posts' => [
        'title',
        'text'
    ],
    'posts.comments' => [
        'title',
        'text',
    ],
];

Controller

To query the model we have few options after passing the search term as the first argument:

return User::search('john')->paginate(15);

Here, the attributes defined in the model and attributes passed in the second argument will be queried:

return User::search('john', ['username', 'email'])->paginate(15);

Here, attributes passed in the second argument will be queried and the attributes defined in the model will be ignored:

return User::search('john', ['username', 'email'], false)->paginate(15);

Model relations can be passed as follows:

return User::search('john', [
    'email',
    'posts' => [
        'title',
        'text'
    ],
    'posts.comments' => [
        'title',
        'text',
    ]])->get();

Searchable.php

<?php

namespace App\Traits;

trait Searchable
{
    public function scopeSearch($query, $q, array $columns = [], $push = true)
    {
        if (!empty($q)) {
            if (empty($columns)) {
                $columns = $this->searchable;
            } else {
                if ($push) {
                    $columns = array_merge_recursive($this->searchable, $columns);
                }
            }

            foreach ($columns as $relation => $column) {
                if (is_array($column)) {
                    foreach ($column as $val) {
                        $query->orWhereHas($relation, function ($query) use ($q, $val) {
                            $query->where($val, 'like', "%$q%");
                        });
                    }
                } else {
                    $query->orWhere($column, 'like', "%$q%");
                }
            }
        }

        return $query;
    }
}