Where to write search logic in laravel - laravel

Question

I am writing a search script and want to return results based on the user's query.
Following is my route :-
Route::get('/search/{city}/{searchquery}', 'SearchController#search');
Controller
public function search($city, $query){
strtolower($query);
$commonWords = array('a','able','about','above','abroad'.....);
$cleanQuery = preg_replace('/\b('.implode('|',$commonWords).')\b/','',$query);
$cleanQuery = $s = preg_replace('/[^a-z0-9]+/i', ' ', $cleanQuery);
$queryarray = explode(' ',$cleanQuery);
$queryarray = array_filter( $queryarray );
$queryarray = array_slice( $queryarray, 0 );
//code to match each query word with MySQL fields such as title, description
return $result;
}
I believe, all this logic and code should not be written in the controller. What can I use to write logic and use controller to only return result

Answer 1

The simplest way would be to use models for that. Just write a method that gets keywords and parses it into sql query. You could use scope methods to allow for more flexibility.
public function scopeSearch($q, $keywords)
{
// ... $keywords processing here
$keywordsArray = explode(',', $keywords);
return $query->whereIn('keyword', $keywordsArray);
// OR maybe something like this?
return $query->where('keywords', 'LIKE', '%'. $keywords .'%');
}
You could use this method in a controller like that:
$city = new City();
$results = $city->search($keywords)->where(/* additional conditions could be added here */)->get();
Even if you decide not to use scope methods, I would still advise to return query builder objects instead of collections as to allow for better flexibility, such as implementing pagination or additional manipulation in controllers where needed.
You could also use Repositories if you are not afraid to add more complexify to gain more flexibility. More on that here: https://laracasts.com/lessons/repositories-simplified