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