Laravel filter search

[!WARNING] This package wasn't yet tested in production use at your own risks. Tests should arrive soon.

Why?

I was making a website that needed a lot of filtering flexibility and a simple search wouldn't do. I could have made a bunch of filters with selects, checkboxes etc, but that would quickliy have become messy.

Then I remembered how github projects does it and it solved all the problems at once!

Requirements

• PHP 8.0+
• Laravel 9.0+

Installing

You can install the package via composer

composer require theokbokki/laravel-filter-search

Using

The model you want to make searchable should have the trait HasFilterSearch and it should implement these 2 methods:

public static function defaultSearchFields(): array
{
    return [
        // the list of the model fields you want to be able to seach normally.
    ];
}

public static function allowedSearchFields(): array
{
    return [
        // the list of the model fields you want to allow filtering on. 
    ];
}

Then when you want to search (for example in a controller), you use the handleFilterSearch method

$query = Snippet::handleFilterSearch($searchTerm);

The syntax

The syntax was heavily inspired by the one from Github projects, here's a rundown of the possibilities. One thing to note is that case isn't taken into account, so "TEST" and "test" are the same.

Regular search

You can simply put a search term like normal and get what you want

| Search terms | Result | |---|---| | test | Will return the records containg the string "test" in the fields specified in defaultSearchFields() |

Field search

You can use all the fields speicifed in allowedSearchFields() to make the search more precise

| Search terms | Result | |---|---| | title:Test | Will return the records containg the string "test" in the title field |

Combining filters

You can freely mix and match search terms and filters to get very precise results

| Search terms | Result | |---|---| | title:Foo published:true Bar | Will return the records containg the string "Foo" in the title field, with published = true and Bar in the fields specified in defaultSearchFields() |

Reversing the search

You can also add an hyphen before the field or keyword to reverse the search

| Search terms | Result | |---|---| | -title:Test | Will return any record not containg the string "test" in the title field | | -test | Will return any record not containg the string "test" in the fields specified in defaultSearchFields() |

What if my search contains space, commas or colons?

You can add double quotes around your search to handle space, commas and colons.

| Search terms | Result | |---|---| | title:"Sentence: with spaces, colons and commas" | Will return any record containg the string "Sentence: with spaces, colons and commas" in the title field |