John Davidson

Message:

I have a SearchController where I check a search term against two tables, first for exact matches (followed by a redirect table to the relevant manufacturer page) and then for partial matches - four conditions in total. All of these conditions work except the last one, probably because it often needs to return just one result inside of a collection.

I need this to be the case as I would like to do $results->slug, $results->name, etc. throughout the view no matter which search condition is being triggered. Currently I'm able to do this to access the search results of all the conditions except the third one.

Search Controller class, where everything but the third condition is working as it should:

class SearchController extends Controller

{

        public function index() {

            if (request("search")) {



            # Works as expected

            $exact_terms = SearchTerm::with("manufacturer")->where('term', request("search"))->get();

            if($exact_terms->isNotEmpty()) {

                echo "Exact search term match!";

                $results = $exact_terms;



                foreach ($results as $result) {

                    $slug = $result->manufacturer->slug;

                }



                return redirect()->action([ManufacturerController::class, 'index'], ["manufacturer" => $slug]); 

            }



            # Works as expected

            $exact_make = Manufacturer::where('slug', request("search"))->get();

            if($exact_make->isNotEmpty()) {

                echo "Exact manufacturer match!";

                $results = $exact_make;



                foreach ($results as $result) {

                    $slug = $result->slug;

                }

                return redirect()->action([ManufacturerController::class, 'index'], ["manufacturer" => $slug]); 

            }



            # Doesn't work

            $search_terms = SearchTerm::with("manufacturer")->where('term', "like", '%' . request("search") . '%')->get()->unique("manufacturers");

            if($search_terms->isNotEmpty()) {

                echo "Search term match!";

                foreach ($search_terms as $search_term) {

                    $search_term = $search_term->manufacturer;

                }

                $results = collect($search_term);

            } 



            # Works as expected

            $search_make = Manufacturer::where('slug', 'like', '%' . request("search") . '%')->get();

            if($search_make->isNotEmpty()) {

                echo "Manufacturer match!";

                $results = $search_make;

            }



        $results = isset($results) ? $results : collect();

        }

        

        return view("search", [

        "manufacturer" => $manufacturer,

        "results" => $results,

    ]);

    }

}

View file:

@if($results)

       

<h1 class="my-5"> {{ $results->count() }} {{ $results->count() == 1 ? "result" : "results" }} found for <i>{{ request("search") }}</i></h1>



@foreach ($results as $result)



{{ $result->slug }}



@endforeach    

@else

<p><h1>Sorry! We couldn't find any results for <i>"{{ request("search") }}"</i>.</h1></p>

@endif

Result of a dd($results) when triggering the condition just before the foreach loop:

Illuminate\Support\Collection {#1406 ▼

#items: array:5 [▼

    "id" => 15

    "slug" => "ford"

    "name" => "Ford"

    "created_at" => "2022-01-28T19:53:28.000000Z"

    "updated_at" => "2022-01-28T19:53:28.000000Z"

]

#escapeWhenCastingToString: false

}

Result of a dd($result) when triggering the condition inside of the foreach loop (shows nothing from the array but the primary key):

15

---

My Answer:
In PHP, you can return a collection of one without using an array by simply returning the value directly. Here is an example:

php
function returnOne() {
return 1;
}

$value = returnOne();
echo $value; // Output: 1


In this example, the `returnOne()` function returns the value `1` directly without using an array. You can then assign the returned value to a variable and use it as needed.