How do I use a row count in an #if in a Laravel view? - laravel

Question

I am brand new to Laravel and I'm running Version 6.
I want my view to display a button if one of my MySQL tables has rows that meet a specific condition but I'm having trouble figuring out how to code it - and even WHERE to code it - within my Laravel application.
My MySQL table is called diary_entries and various users of the system will contribute zero to n rows to it. Each row of the table contains a user id called client. When a given user goes to the Welcome view, I want the view to determine if that user currently has any rows in the diary_entries table. If he does, I want to display a button that will take him to another page where the entries can be displayed or edited or deleted.
I think I want to construct an #if that counts the number of records for that user; if the count is greater than zero, I want to display the button, otherwise the button is not displayed.
The problem is that I can't figure out how to code this. I've looked at the examples in the Eloquent section of the manual but they aren't particularly clear to me. I found a note near the top that said the count() function expects a Collection as an argument and that the result of an Eloquent statement is always a Collection so I guessed that I just have to execute an Eloquent query, then apply count() to the resulting Collection. But every variation of that idea which I've tried has thrown exceptions.
Here was the guess that seemed most logical to me:
#extends('layout');
#section('content');
<div class="content">
<img class="centered" src="/images/sleeping-cat.jpg" alt="sleeping cat" height="250">
<div class="title m-b-md">
<h1> Sleep Diary </h1>
</div>
<div>
<h3>{{Auth::user()->name }}</h3>
</div>
<div>
#if (count(App\DiaryEntry::select('*')->where('client', Auth::user()->name) > 0))
<p>
<a class="btn btn-primary"> View / edit existing sleep diary entries </a>
</p>
#endif
</div>
<div>
<p>
<a class="btn btn-primary" href="/diaryEntries"> Create a new sleep diary entry </a>
</div>
</div>
#endsection
This is obviously wrong because it throws an exception so how do I make it right? Does the building of the collection have to move into the Controller? If so, how do I invoke the method and see its result? Or can I do something like I have already done but just adjust the syntax a bit?
EDIT
I've imitated Sehdev's suggestion but I get this error:
$count is undefined
Make the variable optional in the blade template. Replace {{ $count }} with {{ $count ?? '' }}
Here is my welcome view:
#extends('layout');
#section('content');
<div class="content">
<img class="centered" src="/images/sleeping-cat.jpg" alt="sleeping cat" height="250">
<div class="title m-b-md">
<h1>Sleep Diary</h1>
</div>
<div>
<h3>{{ Auth::user()->name }}</h3>
</div>
<div>
#if ($count) > 0))
<p>
<a class="btn btn-primary">View/edit existing sleep diary entries</a>
</p>
#endif
</div>
<div>
<p><a class="btn btn-primary" href="/diaryEntries">Create a new sleep diary entry</a>
</div>
</div>
#endsection
And this is the relevant function from DiaryEntryController:
public function countEntriesOneUser()
{
$count = DiaryEntry::select('*')->where('client', Auth::user()->name)->count();
view("welcome", compact("count"));
}
Should the compact function be returning $count instead of count? I can't find the compact function in the manual with the search function so I'm not clear what it does or what the proper syntax is. I just tried changing the last line of the function to
view("welcome", $count);
but that produced the same error.

Answer 1

Try this,
#php
$count=\App\DiaryEntry::where('client', Auth::user()->name)->count();
#endphp
#if($count>1)
<p><a class="btn btn-primary">View/edit existing sleep diary entries</a></p>
#endif

Answer 2

Using App\DiaryEntry::select('*')->where('client', Auth::user()->name) directly on your blade template is a bad practise.
You can execute your question in your controllers method and then pass the result on your view file
Your function
function test(){
$count = DiaryEntry::select('*')->where('client', Auth::user()->name)->count(); // get the total no of records using count
view("index", compact("count")) // pass your count variable here
}
then you can directly use $count in your #if condition
Your blade template
<div>
#if ($count > 0)
<p><a class="btn btn-primary">View/edit existing sleep diary entries</a></p>
#endif
</div>