Laravel search form using database - forms

Question

I have a search form with three fields: Department, Role and Location which I'm calling Contacts search and it is to be on multiple pages.
Here is a picture:
To this extent, I made it a Blade include so I could just re-use it wherever I need it.
All of the values for these fields are available to me in the Users table as I could do the following:
SELECT DISTINCT department, role, location FROM users
This would give me all of the unique roles, departments and locations.
However, for me to populate this form via the database would I have to pass the data to the parent view every time?
For instance, I was thinking something like this.
In Controller
$formFields = User::distinct()->get(['department', 'role', 'location']);
In view
#foreach(formFields as $field)
$field->department
...
...
#endforeach
The only issue is, surely I would have to send this data to every view that uses the form?
Alternatively, do I just make a SearchController that uses the User model to feed into it?
Is it possible to feed data to a partial view in this way?
Update
View composers do seem to be the way to go, however I don't feel this is valid:
view()->composer('layouts.quick-search', function($view) {
$view->with('departments', \App\User::distinct()->get(['department']),
'locations', \App\User::distinct()->get(['location']),
'roles', \App\User::distinct()->get(['role']));
});
As it doesn't seem to like multiple variables.
I also tried the following:
<select class="form-control transparant" id="department" name="department">
#foreach($departments as $department)
<option value="{{ $department }}">{{ $department }}</option>
#endforeach
</select>
But this filled the select box with:
{"department":"Digital","profile":null}
This is clearly an array, but does this mean I'll have to JSON decode this?

Answer 1

As I mentioned in my comment, you could do something like this:
In view
#php $formFields = \App\User::distinct()->get(['department', 'role', 'location']); #endphp
#foreach(formFields as $field)
$field->department
...
...
#endforeach
Another way to do this would be creating a group of all those views that use the partial view. Apply a middleware to that group where you assign the data to the request or share the data to the views using View::share()

Answer 2

View composers are perfect for this.
You create a separate view for the form, something like search and put this in a service provider:
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\View;
use App\User;
// ...
publlic function boot()
{
View::composer('search', function ($view) {
$view->with([
'formFields' => User::distinct()->get(['department', 'role', 'location']);
]);
});
}
Now every time the search view will be used, this query will be executed and the results will be passed to the view.