Laravel 9 - How to implement dynamic column sorting in Eloquent with multiple criteria?
I'm deploying to production and I'm trying to configure I've been struggling with this for a few days now and could really use some help... I'm working on a Laravel 9 application and I need to implement a feature that allows users to dynamically sort a list of products based on multiple columns. I've set up the basic filtering using Eloquent, but I'm unsure how to handle sorting efficiently, especially when sorting by multiple criteria like 'price' and 'created_at'. Currently, I'm passing the sorting parameters via a query string, but my approach seems a bit clunky. Here's what I have so far: ```php public function index(Request $request) { $query = Product::query(); // Apply filters if any if ($request->has('category')) { $query->where('category_id', $request->input('category')); } // Dynamic sorting $sortBy = $request->input('sort_by', 'created_at'); // default sort by created_at $sortOrder = $request->input('sort_order', 'asc'); // default order asc // Validate sort input $validSortColumns = ['price', 'created_at', 'name']; if (in_array($sortBy, $validSortColumns) && in_array($sortOrder, ['asc', 'desc'])) { $query->orderBy($sortBy, $sortOrder); } $products = $query->paginate(10); return view('products.index', compact('products')); } ``` This works for a single sort column, but I need to allow multi-column sorting. For example, if a user selects 'price' to sort ascending and then 'created_at' to sort descending, how can I achieve that in the query? I’ve considered passing multiple sort parameters, e.g., `sort_by[]=price&sort_by[]=created_at&sort_order[]=asc&sort_order[]=desc`, but I’m not sure how to handle that in the query builder. Additionally, would this approach have any performance implications? Any insights or examples would be greatly appreciated! My development environment is Ubuntu. Has anyone else encountered this? For reference, this is a production desktop app. Is this even possible? I'm working in a Windows 11 environment. Has anyone dealt with something similar? For context: I'm using Php on Ubuntu 22.04. I'm open to any suggestions.