Reuse Data from a Controller in an other View

@JussiMannisto the data is just needed in a single sidebar view template, so View::share is not appropriate.

@stanhook I don’t understand; do you need exactly the same data for the sidebar as the main page content???

@tykus Yes. Exactly the same data in a number of views. It is general information that I want available in a number of views with text and links. I created a Service Class, placed all my queries in there and used that.

@stanhook something about this smells... but I don't know your application, or the full problem you are trying to solve. Is the same data needed on multiple pages because it is in a shared partial/component (e.g. a header, sidebar or footer), or are there multiple pages with duplicated information?

@tykus Think of this as a house. The main page is the floor plan and in the sidebar there is information (text and links) about the house - home details, specs, links to various other specs, associated builder information, links to that particular construction data, lot locations, etc. All of which is pulled from the database that is related to that floor plan.. As the user navigates to any of those other sections, I need that sidebar information to stay so the user can continue to review other information about that floor plan.

Does that help?

@stanhook I'm not sure it does help TBH.

The sidebar is a list of (current floor plan-specific) links, or is something more like the main content? Why does the Controller actions need to fetch this exact data as well as say a Sidebar Component class?

If the structure of the data is exactly the same in both cases, then something about your solution would seem sub-optimal.

@tykus Maybe this helps. The user can choose many different locations from a map and then the floor plans that are available for that location get populated on another map. From there they can choose a floor plan that populates the main area of content as well as various features as mentioned in the sidebar. It is possible though, that they can navigate to a section of the floor plan that will populate a new set of data in that sidebar.

Before the user would have to use forms and make their selections of specific options in order to see that floor plan specific data, content that would populate the main content area. We are just making that data available in the sidebar so the user doesn't have to go through all of those steps just to get a single piece of information. We are making all of the information available in that sidebar as long as it is relative to what they are currently viewing. If the move to a different area of the floor plan or location it is possible that the sidebar gets populated with something else from the database.

If I can do that with a Sidebar Component can you explain more why (how) that would be better than the Service Class that I created?

Just to note, the Service Class works great can provides what I need.

Thanks for the help.

@stanhook I don't doubt the Service class can do the job... you don't seem to understand what I am saying about the need for the same data being required across multiple Controller actions and the sidebar ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@Snapey I can take a look at that. Is creating a Service Class and placing my queries in there not a good idea?

@stanhook it can be done, but it would be a bit pointless since it still does not give you what you want

@stanhook Why do you keep going on about service classes when you’ve been told multiple times now to use a view composer?

If you have a common element such as a sidebar that will be present on multiple pages, extract the mark-up to a partial, and include that partial in the pages that need it:

<main>
    <!-- Main page content -->
</main>
@include('partials.sidebar')

Then create a view composer to give that partial the data it needs:

use Illuminate\Contracts\View\View;

class SidebarComposer
{
    protected FooService $foo;
    protected BarService $bar;

    public function __construct(FooService $foo, BarService $bar)
    {
        $this->foo = $foo;
        $this->bar = $bar;
    }

    public function compose(View $view)
    {
        $view->with([
            'foo' => $this->foo->someMethod(),
            'bar' => $this->bar->someMethod(),
        ]);
    }
}

Then you need to associate the view composer with the Blade template. You’d do this in a service provider’s boot method. You can just do it in your existing AppServiceProvider class:

use App\View\Composers\SidebarComposer;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\View;

class AppServiceProvider extends Provider
{
    public function boot()
    {
        View::composer('partials.sidebar', SidebarComposer::class);
    }
}