How to output table data from controller to view? - laravel

Question

I'm in the beginning stages of trying to make sense of Laravel and am having trouble displaying the 'illuminate collection object' passed to a blade from a controller.
My print_r is outputting "Illuminate\Support\Collection Object ( [items:protected] => Array ( ) ) 1" which I thought meant that it was seeing one item in the array (just one record in the table currently), but I'm hitting the #else statement so I'm guessing it's actually empty. I'm getting no errors, but I have not been able to display anything from $products despite $title outputting just fine.
public function shop(){
$products = DB::table('products')->get();
$data = array(
'title'=>'Shop',
'products' => $products
);
return view('pages.shop')->with($data);
}
#section('content')
<h1>{{$title}}</h1>
{{ print_r($products) }}
#if($products->count())
<ul class="list-group">
#foreach($products as $product)
<li class="list-group-item">{{$product->title}}</li>
#endforeach
</ul>
#else
<p>No products</p>
#endif
#endsection
Why is my array empty?

Answer 1

On your Controller:
$title = 'Shop';
$products = DB::table('products')->get();
return view('pages.shop', compact('title', 'products');
On your Blade:
I would also suggest to put your unordered list tag <ul> outside of the loop then use #forelse for a cleaner code, like so:
#section('content')
<h1>{{$title}}</h1>
<ul class="list-group">
#forelse($products as $product)
<li class="list-group-item">{{$product->title}}</li>
#empty
<li class="list-group-item">No products</li>
#endforelse
</ul>
#endsection

Answer 2

Try this..........
public function shop()
{
$products = DB::table('products')->get();
$title = "Shop";
return view('pages.shop', compact('products', 'title'));
}
#section('content')
<h1>{{ isset($title) ? $title : '-' }}</h1>
#if($products->count())
<ul class="list-group">
#foreach($products as $product)
<li class="list-group-item">{{ isset($product->title) ? $product->title : '-' }}</li>
#endforeach
</ul>
#else
<p>No products</p>
#endif
#endsection

Answer 3

You can display the data by first passing it as an array to the view
return view('pages.shop')->with('data', $data);
then in the blade
#section('content')
<h1>{{$data['title']}}</h1>
#if(count($data['products']))
<ul class="list-group">
#foreach($data['products'] as $product)
<li class="list-group-item">{{$product->title}}</li>
#endforeach
</ul>
#else
<p>No products</p>
#endif
#endsection

Answer 4

Pass both $products and $title to the view, I prefer to use compact feels cleaner.
$title = 'shop';
$products = DB::table('products')->get();
return view('pages.shop', compact('title', 'products');
Then in your view you can reference them directly. As you are doing now.
#section('content')
<h1>{{$title}}</h1>
#if($products->count())
<ul class="list-group">
#foreach($products as $product)
<li class="list-group-item">{{$product->title}}</li>
#endforeach
</ul>
#else
<p>No products</p>
#endif
#endsection

Answer 5

In your controller
$title = 'shop';
$products = DB::table('products')->get();
return view('pages.shop', compact('title', 'products');
OR
$products = DB::table('products')->get();
$data = array(
'title'=>'Shop',
'products' => $products
);
return view('pages.shop')->with('data',$data);
In your Blade
#section('content')
<h1>{{$title}}</h1>
#if(count($products))
<ul class="list-group">
#foreach($products as $product)
<li class="list-group-item">{{$product->title}}</li>
#endforeach
</ul>
#else
<p>No products</p>
#endif
#endsection