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Search-Component

The Search-Component allows us to add a search-engine to our list. This works smoothly with the PaginatorComponent of CakePHP.

Loading

You can load the component in your AppController:

public function initialize() {
    // code
    $this->loadComponent('Utils.Search');

    $this->helpers[] = 'Utils.Search';
}

Configuring

The component handles muliple filters wich will contain default settings. The default settings can be changed with:

$this->Search->config('_default', []);

Default settings:

• Column - The column where the search will be done to. Default depends on the added filter.
• Operator - The operator like '=' or 'LIKE'. Default set to 'LIKE'.
• Attributes - Attributes for the form. Default configurations are set here.
• Options - An option-list when you want a select-box.

Usage

Adding filters

You can add filters in your action-method like:

$this->Search->addFilter('username');

In this case there will be add a filter to search on the column 'username'. To change te column-name, use:

$this->Search->addFilter('username', [
    'column' => 'custom_column',
]);

Note: You are not able YET to search on multiple columns.

The previous examples will create a text-box where you can type your commands. But what if we want to add a selectbox? Imagine we want to search in our articles and want to add a searchbox for the categories:

$this->Search->addFilter('category_id', [
    'options' => $this->Articles->Categories->find('list')->toArray(),
]);

This is all you need, this will create a selectbox to select a category to search on.

Removing filters

Maybe you want to remove filters. We've build the following method to do that:

$this->Search->removeFilter('username');

Setting up the query

You've added your filters, but they aren't used yet. Using the search method will expand our current query:

// add your filters

$users = $this->Users->find('all', ['contain' => ['Roles']]);

$search = $this->Search->search($users);

$this->set(compact('search'));

In this example we pushed the variable $users to the search method. This method returned a modified Query-object.

It is very easy to integrate the PaginatorComponent:

// add your filters

$users = $this->Users->find('all', ['contain' => ['Roles']]);

$search = $this->Search->search($users);

$paginated = $this->paginate($search);

$this->set(compact('paginated'));

Now, the query we created at $users is modified by the SearchComponent AND the Paginator.

Building the form

Now you need a form in your page. For that we need the SearchHelper. This is the only rule of code you need in your html-file:

<?= $this->Search->filterForm($searchFilters) ?>

This piece of code will generate a form, based on the filters stored in the $searchFilters variable. This variable is automatically set by the SearchComponent.