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Laravel Filter Query String

Filter your queries based on url query string parameters like a breeze.

Compatible with Laravel 5.x 6.x 7.x 8.x.

Table of Content

• Describing the Problem
• Usage
  • Installation
  • Available Filters
    • Sort
    • Comparisons
    • In
    • Like
    • Where clause
    • Fields
    • Search
    • Page
    • Limit
    • Relationship
    • Count
    • With Trashed
    • Order By
    • Where
    • Or Where
    • Equal
    • Not Equal
    • Greater Than
    • Greater Than Equal
    • Less Than
    • Less Than Equal
    • Like
    • Not Like
    • Contain
    • Not Contain
    • Start With
    • End With
    • In
    • Not In
    • Between
    • Not Between
    • Is Null
    • Is Not Null
    • Distinct
  • Custom Filters
  • Conditional Filters
  • Manually Passing Filter Array (Livewire)

Describing the Problem

You have probably faced the situation where you needed to filter your query based on given parameters in url query-string and after developing the logics, You've had such a code:

This works, But it's not a good practice.

When the number of parameters starts to grow, The number of these kind of if statements also grows and your code gets huge and hard to maintain.

Also it's against the Open/Closed principal of SOLID principles, Because when you have a new parameter, You need to get into your existing code and add a new logic (which may breaks the existing implementations).

So we have to design a way to make our filters logics separated from each other and apply them into the final query, which is the whole idea behind this package.

Usage

1. First you need to install the package:

$ composer require faridlab/laravel-grammatical-query

2. Then you should use the FilterQueryString trait in your model, And define $filters property which can be consist of custom filters.

3. You need to use filter() method in your eloquent query. For example:

Available Methods

• Sort
• Comparisons
• In
• Like
• Where clause

Filters:

• fields: array ― optional
• search: string ― optional
• page: integer default(1) ― optional
• limit: integer default(25) ― optional
• relationship: array ― optional
• count: array ― optional
• withtrashed: boolean default(false) ― optional
• orderby: array ― optional
• fieldname[where]: string|array ― optional
• fieldname[orwhere]: string|array ― optional
• fieldname[eq]: string|integer ― optional
• fieldname[notEq]: string|integer ― optional
• fieldname[gt]: string|integer ― optional
• fieldname[gtEq]: string|integer ― optional
• fieldname[lt]: string|integer ― optional
• fieldname[ltEq]: string|integer ― optional
• fieldname[like]: string ― optional
• fieldname[notlike]: string ― optional
• fieldname[contain]: string ― optional
• fieldname[notcontain]: string ― optional
• fieldname[startwith]: string ― optional
• fieldname[endwith]: string ― optional
• fieldname[in]: array ― optional
• fieldname[notin]: array ― optional
• fieldname[between]: array ― optional
• fieldname[notbetween]: array ― optional
• fieldname[isnull]: string ― optional
• fieldname[isnotnull]: string ― optional

For the purpose of explaining each method, Imagine we have such data in our users table:

And assume our query is something like this:

Fields

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?fields[]=name&fields[]=email

Search

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?search=faridlab

Page

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?page=1

Limit

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?limit=25

Relationship

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?relationship=role

https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?relationship[]=role&relationship[]=permissions

Count

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?count=addresses

https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?count[]=photos&count[]=accounts

Withtrashed

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?withtrashed=true

Orderby

Orderby is the equivalent to order by sql statement which can be used flexible in FilterQueryString:

Conventions:

In Users.php

Single sort:

https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?orderby=created_at

Output:

• Note that when you're not passing parameter as array instead of string, it will be used as field name and order by 'asc' by default.

Multiple sorts:

https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?orderby[name]=asc&orderby[email]=desc

Output:

Bare in mind that orderby parameter with invalid values will be ignored from query and has no effect to the result.

Where

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?username=faridlab

https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?username[]=faridlab

https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?username[where]=faridlab

Or where

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?username[where]=faridlab

https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?username[where][]=faridlab

https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?username[where][]=mehrad123

Equal

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?username[eq]=faridlab&email[eq][email protected]

Not Equal

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?username[notEq]=faridlab&email[notEq][email protected]

Greater Than

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?id[gt]=10

Greater Than Equal

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?id[gtEq]=10

Less Than

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?id[lt]=10

Less Than Equal

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?id[ltEq]=10

Like

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?username[like]=faridlab

Not Like

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?username[notlike]=faridlab

Contain

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?username[contain]=farid

Not Contain

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?username[notcontain]=farid

Start With

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?username[startwith]=farid

End With

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?username[endwith]=lab

In

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?username[in][]=faridlab&username[in][]=farid

Not In

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?username[notin][]=faridlab&username[notin][]=farid

Between

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?id[between][]=1&id[between][]=10

Not Between

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?id[notbetween][]=1&id[notbetween][]=10

Is Null

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?deleted_at[isnull]=null

https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?deleted_at[isnull]

Is Not Null

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?deleted_at[isnotnull]=null

https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?deleted_at[isnotnull]

Distinct

Convention:

In Users.php

Example: https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?first_name[distinct]=true

https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?first_name[distinct]=1

https://startapp.id/api/v1/users?first_name[distinct]

Where Clause (default filter)

Generally when your query string parameters are not one of previous available methods, It'll get filtered by the default filter which is the where sql statement. It's the proper filter when you need to directly filter one of your table's columns.

Conventions:

Assuming we want to filter name, username and age database columns, In Users.php

Example:

https://startapp.id?name=mehrad

Output:

Example:

https://startapp.id?age=22&username=dariush123

Output:

Example:

https://startapp.id?name[0]=mehrad&name[1]=dariush

Output:

Example:

https://startapp.id?name[0]=mehrad&name[1]=dariush&username[0]=mehrad123&username[1]=reza1234

Output:

Bare in mind that default filter parameter with invalid values will be ignored from query and has no effect to the result.

Custom Filters

By custom filters you can define your own methods as filters. This helps with the Open/Closed of SOLID principles, Hence each time a new filter is needed, you don't have to edit previous filters and you can just write a separate method for it.

Let's create a custom filter. Assuming you want to create a filter named all_except which retrieves all users except the one that is specified:

In Users.php

To test our newly added filter:

https://startapp.id?all_except=mehrad

Output:

Note that your custom defined filters have the most priority which means you can even override available filters.

For example lets change in filter in a way that only accepts 3 values:

In Users.php

Another good example for custom filters are when you don't want to expose your database table's column name. For example assume we don't want to expose that we have a column named username in users table:

In Users.php

https://startapp.id?by=dariush123

Output:

Minor Tip

In order to prevent your model to get messy or populated with filter methods, You can create a trait for it and put everything about filters inside the trait.

Conditional Filters

The $filters property in your model is acting kind of global for that model. It means when you use filter() method on your eloquent query, it'll always performs all the $filters filters.

There might be situations that based on a condition you need to specify which filters exactly you wish to be filtered.

To achieve this you can specify your desired filters as arguments in filter() method.

Example:

In your query:

in=name,mehrad,reza&like=name,mehrad

Output:

If the in argument was not specified, The result of query would be only one record (mehrad).

Another example:

In your query:

like=name,mehrad,reza,dariush,hossein&name[0]=mehrad&name[1]=hossein&username=mehrad

Output:

Manually Passing Filter Array (Livewire)

When using Livewire to filter data, subsequent query string changes do not trigger new requests. We can work around this by manually passing an array of filters.

Example:

Another example:

You can also combine this with conditional filters:

The above would only query the username (not the email) since only the username was included as a conditional.

Note that the filter array must be passed before the conditionals.