Hey all, I currently have a single-page Laravel application, super simple. It displays data from a database and allows for the data to be sorted and searched through. I currently handle all my searching and sorting in the routing file, but it's getting lengthy and I was wondering if it would be best practice to move it to its own controller. Is there a standard for when a controller should be used vs when it would be a waste?
My "searching" route currently looks like:
Route::get('/search', function () {
$orderParam = Input::get('order');
$searchTitle = Input::get('searchtitle');
$archived = Input::get('archive_flag');
//Might no longer need series of if checks, but good to work with manual URL parameters I guess
$query = DB::table('proposals');
if(Input::has('archive_flag')){
$query->where('archive_flag', '=', $archived);
}
if(Input::has('searchtitle')){
$query->where('title', 'LIKE', '% ' . $searchTitle . '%');
}
if(Input::has('order')){
$query->orderBy($orderParam);
}
$proposals = $query->get();
$numResults = $query->count();
$documents = DB::table('prop_documents')->get();
$comments = DB::table('prop_status')->get();
return view('index', ['proposals' => $proposals, 'documents' => $documents, 'comments' => $comments, 'numResults'=>$numResults]);
});
Thanks to anyone who can provide some insight
The simple answer is use controllers every time.
The routes file is for handling routes and controllers are for handling route actions.
But, a lot of people would also tell you skinny controllers are better and that you should also consider moving that search functionality into a service class and injecting that into the controller.
So I should move all my logic to a controller and my route file should become just a GET route to the controller?
Yep. That's the core of the MVC pattern.
Additionally, routes with closures can't be cached. Eventually you'll probably want to cache them, especially on your production server, as it does speed things up.
https://laravel.com/docs/5.6/controllers#route-caching
Closures are great for quickly mocking something up, or testing something, but once it's working you should really always move it to a controller.
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