Scoped Controller

Scoped Controller is a very simple Laravel package (<80 LOC) that will allow you to build queries and cleanup your controllers by executing scopes based on request parameters.

Inspired on the Ruby on Rails gem Has Scope.

Install

Just include it in your composer.json file

composer require petrelli/scoped-controller

Or add:

"petrelli/scoped-controller": "0.9.*"

And run composer update.

Basic Usage

Imagine we have a Book model with two filters, by year and by author.

URL parameters might look like the following:

# Get books filtered by year == 2020
/books?byYear=2020

# Get books filtered by author == cortazar
/books?byAuthor=cortazar

# Get books filtered by year and author
/books?byYear=1961&byAuthor=borges

Steps

1. Create your controller and be sure to inherit from Petrelli\ScopedController\BaseController.

2. Define which class will hold your collection with the $entity variable. Usually an Eloquent Model, but could be any class that respond to scopes.

protected $entity = Book::class;

3. Now define the $scopes variable as an Array following the pattern [ URLparameter => scopeName, .... ]

use Petrelli\ScopedController\BaseController;

class EventsController extends BaseController {

// Here as an example we have two scopes: year and author.
// They will be called if we receive the parameters
// byYear and byAuthor respectively.
protected $scopes = [
    'byYear'   => 'year',
    'byAuthor' => 'author',
];

}

4. Now to get a filtered collection simply call $this->collection(). You can use any available function. If using Eloquent, you could use get(), paginate(...), or anything you need to chain.

$items = $this->collection()->get();
$items = $this->collection()->paginate(static::PER_PAGE);

Customizing the scopes chain

We provide a controller function named beginOfAssociationChain() that you could overload. In there we build the base query over which we will apply all of our scopes.

For example:

protected function beginOfAssociationChain()
{
    return Book::published()->where('library', 'NYC');
}

Here every time we call $this->collection() as previously described we will be executing the published() scope, and also filtering books where 'library' is 'NYC'.

$items = $this->collection()->get();
$items = $this->collection()->paginate(static::PER_PAGE);

Applying scopes manually

We provide the function applyScopes($query) in case you want to manually apply your scopes to a query. As always, which scope will be triggered is a function of the request parameters.

// Controller function
public function index()
{
    $items = $this->applyScopes(Book::query())->get();
}

Extra functionality

Scopes with multi-value parameters

If you need to define a multi-value parameter just pass it as an array and define the scopes as the following:

// Here as an example we have two scopes: year and author.
// They will be called if we receive the parameters
// byYear and byAuthor respectively.
protected $scopes = [
    'byYear'   => 'year',
    'byAuthor' => 'author',
    'sortBy'   => ['sort_by' ['field', 'direction']],
];

Defining the scope as an array will allow you to pass multiple parameters to it coming from the URL as arrays.

Multi-value scopes in action

# Get books filtered by year = 2018 and sorted by author in alphabetical order
/books?byYear=2018&sortBy['field']=author&sortBy['direction']=asc

# Get books filtered by author = borges and sorted by date
/books?byAuthor=borges&sortBy['field']=date&sortBy['direction']=desc

You get the idea. The scope is nothing but a simple two parameter element.

public function scopeSortBy($query, $value, $direction = 'asc')
{
    //...
}

Of course you can generalize to use any number of parameters. Simply add it to the $scopes definition.

Check if any filter is present

Common use case, if you need to check if any scope is present:

// Returns true/false
$this->hasAnyScope()

Use specific scopes for different actions

Because $this->collection() is returning a Query Builder (when using Eloquent for example), you could keep chaining methods and scopes as you would normally do:

public function index()
{
    // Return Books triggering defined scopes
    $items = $this->collection()->get();
}

public function indexBestSellers()
{
    // Return Books triggering defined scopes + bestSeller scope
    $items = $this->collection()->bestSeller()->get();
}

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.