Laravel 5.4 how to exclude empty field in url when GET form? - forms

Question

I built form with GET method but when i submit form empty field also pass to url, can i exclude empty field from passing to url ?
For example > when i submit my form url changed to :
?jobTitle=Title&jobCompany=CompanyName&jobGovernorate=&jobLocation=&postingDate=ad
Here in this example jobGovernorate and jobLocation is empty so i want form skip those when i submit the form.
If there's a way to get url like this
?jobTitle=Title&jobCompany=CompanyName&postingDate=ad
Because jobGovernorate and jobLocation is empty
Sorry for poor english, Thank you.

Answer 1

You can use middleware for your problem
class StripEmptyParams
{
public function handle($request, Closure $next)
{
$query = request()->query();
$querycount = count($query);
foreach ($query as $key => $value) {
if ($value == '') {
unset($query[$key]);
}
}
if ($querycount > count($query)) {
$path = url()->current() . (!empty($query) ? '/?' . http_build_query($query) : '');
return redirect()->to($path);
}
return $next($request);
}
}
then call for specific route like code below
Route::get('/search','YourController#search')->middleware(StripEmptyParams::class);

Answer 2

Assuming you have a form as below
<form>
<input type="text" class="url_params" name="jobTitle" value="">
<input type="text" class="url_params" name="jobCompany" value="">
<input type="text" class="url_params" name="jobGovernorate" value="">
<input type="text" class="url_params" name="jobLocation" value="">
<input type="text" class="url_params" name="postingDate" value="">
<input type="submit" name="submit" id="submit">
</form>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function () {
$("#submit").on("click", function(e) {
e.preventDefault();
var url = '{{ url('/') }}?';
var total = $(".url_params").length;
$(".url_params").each(function (index) {
if ($(this).val().trim().length) {
if (index === total - 1) {
url += $(this).attr('name') + '=' + $(this).val();
} else {
url += $(this).attr('name') + '=' + $(this).val() + "&";
}
}
});
window.location.href = url;
});
});
</script>
The above code will generate an URL based on the field value and redirect to the url. So it won't generate a url with the empty field value key.
And having an empty field value shouldn't make a difference as you could check for the url values in the controller using $request->input('key')
Hope this helps!

Answer 3

Go through array like this, you will just check if your array has empty, will not add the key.
$data = array('foo'=>'bar',
'baz'=>'boom',
'cow'=>'milk',
'php'=>'hypertext processor');
echo http_build_query($data) . "\n";
//echo http_build_query($data, '', '&'); // only for use &amp instead & if needed

Answer 4

I have applied the next middleware on a Laravel 8.x project to solve a related problem. This may be helpful to other ones...
<?php
namespace App\Http\Middleware;
use Closure;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
class StripEmptyParamsFromQueryString
{
/**
* Remove parameters with empty value from a query string.
*
* #param \Illuminate\Http\Request $request
* #param \Closure(\Illuminate\Http\Request): (\Illuminate\Http\Response|\Illuminate\Http\RedirectResponse) $next
* #return \Illuminate\Http\Response|\Illuminate\Http\RedirectResponse
*/
public function handle(Request $request, Closure $next)
{
// Get the current query and the number of query parameters.
$query = request()->query();
$queryCount = count($query);
// Strip empty query parameters.
foreach ($query as $param => $value) {
if (! isset($value) || $value == '') {
unset($query[$param]);
}
}
// If there were empty query parameters, redirect to a new url with the
// non empty query parameters. Otherwise keep going with the current
// request.
if ($queryCount > count($query)) {
return redirect()->route($request->route()->getName(), $query);
}
return $next($request);
}
}
Note the middleware should only be applied to specific routes, not to all request. In my particular case I have a resource controller and to apply the middleware only to the index route I have used the next approach inside the resource controller:
<?php
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Http\Middleware\StripEmptyParamsFromQueryString;
class MyController extends Controller
{
/**
* Instantiate a new controller instance.
*
* #return void
*/
public function __construct()
{
$this->middleware(StripEmptyParamsFromQueryString::class)
->only('index');
}
...
}