Make your Laravel models Sortable in a moment

There are lots of situations when you need a sorting functionality for your models. Of course everyone wants simple package to cover all common use cases.

Know what? You've found it!

This package will automatically apply sort index for your newly created models, and also handle all resorting stuff.

Installation

You can install this package using composer. Just run a command bellow.

composer require ninoman/laravel-sortable

Usage

It's very easy to start with this package. Just use Ninoman\LaravelSortable\Sortable trait in your model, and add sort_index column in your models migration and into $fillable property.

use Ninoman\LaravelSortable\Sortable;

class MyModel extends Eloquent
{
    use Sortable;
    
    protected $fillable = [
        ...
        'sort_index',
        ...
    ];
    
    ...
}



class CreateMyModelsTable extends Migration
{
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::create('my_models', function (Blueprint $table) {
            ...
            $table->unsignedInteger('sort_index');
            ...
        });
    }

    public function down()
    {
        Schema::dropIfExists('my_models');
    }
}

But of course every cool package should be configurable. This one is too :)

Configurations

So if you want to change the sorting column (by default it is sort_index), you should set a $sortIndexColumn property in your model.

use Ninoman\LaravelSortable\Sortable;

class MyModel extends Eloquent
{
    use Sortable;
    
    public $sortIndexColumn = 'order';
    
    ...
}

How I've mentioned above your newly created model will be sorted automatically, but in case you don't want it, you always can set property $setSortIndexOnCreating to false

use Ninoman\LaravelSortable\Sortable;

class MyModel extends Eloquent
{
    use Sortable;
    
    public $setSortIndexOnCreating = false;
    
    ...
}

Let's imagine a situation, when you have Users and every user has many Posts. In this kind of situation if you would like to add sorting for Posts, it will be weird to sort all Posts together, of course you will want to sort them for each user (grouped by user_id).

It can be easily done by setting $sortingParentColumn property of your model name of the column by which you want to group your sorting. And your newly created Posts now will be sorted uniquely for their user.

use Ninoman\LaravelSortable\Sortable;

class Post extends Eloquent
{
    use Sortable;
    
    public $sortingParentColumn = 'user_id';
    
    ...
}

You also can configure start index of your models sorting, by default it will start from 1. To change it you should set $startSortingFrom property the number from which you want to start sorting.

use Ninoman\LaravelSortable\Sortable;

class MyModel extends Eloquent
{
    use Sortable;
    
    public $startSortingFrom = 0;
    
    ...
}

MyModel::create([...]); // sort_index 0
MyModel::create([...]); // sort_index 1
MyModel::create([...]); // sort_index 2

Helpful stuff

Simple but useful scopes

Trait also will add some functionality to your models. For example, if you want get your models sorted, just apply sorted scope on your models.

/*
    Models 
    
    ['id' => 1, 'sort_index' => 2];
    ['id' => 2, 'sort_index' => 3];
    ['id' => 3, 'sort_index' => 1];
*/

MyModel::pluck('id'); // [1, 2, 3]
MyModel::sorted()->pluck('id'); // [3, 1, 2]

Also you can use sortedDesc scope, which how you have guessed will order models in descending order.

Methods

Be sure this methods will make your life easier.

If you have two models and want to swap them use swapSort method:

MyModel::swapSort($modelOne, $modelTwo);

In order to manipulate your one model's sorting you can use those methods:

$myModel->moveSortIndexDown();
$myModel->moveSortIndexUp();
$myModel->toSortingTop();
$myModel->toSortingBottom();

And of course you can just update your model's property, which is responsible for sort index and all other entities will be reordered automatically.

use Ninoman\LaravelSortable\Sortable;

class MyModel extends Eloquent
{
    use Sortable;
    
    public $sortIndexColumn = 'order';
    
    ...
}

$one = $myModel::create([...]); //order 1 
$two = $myModel::create([...]); //order 2 
$three = $myModel::create([...]); //order 3 
$four = $myModel::create([...]); //order 4

$four->update(['order' => 2]);
//$one -> order 1;
//$four -> order 2;
//$two -> order 3;
//$three -> order 4;

Conclusions

It's a lightweight, easy to use package which you can easily integrate into your application. Feel free to report about issues and possible improvements.

Thank you!