Hidden inputs in Laravel blade.php

Hey so I’m trying to sort entries by a type of pet, the code below is code from my blade.php

<div>
                        <td>
                            <form>
                                @csrf
                                <input name="cat" type="hidden" value="cat">
                                <a name="cat" href="{{ url('sorting') }}" value="cat">Cat</a>
                            </form>
                        </td>
                    </div>

In the blade file I’d have multiple links such as cat, dog, rabbit which essentially act as filtering options

I have a sort method in my controller that does the following

 public function sorting(Request $request){
        if($request->input('cat') === 'cat'){
            $pets = Pet::Where('type', 'cat')->get();
            return view('index', compact('pets'));
        }
}

In my sort method, I’m trying to check if the cat link is clicked and then if it is it would return only pets of type cat, the problem I have is that my $request->input('cat') is returning a null. How would I correct this?

Answers:

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Method 1

You have multiple issues in your code:

1. You don’t seem to have a way to actually submit the form. The link in the post won’t do it on it’s own (unless you have some event on that link in JS)
2. <a>-tags don’t have a value-attribute and the name-attribute means something completely different for links and is not for submitting data through forms.
3. A form without a method will use GET as default. You’re trying to retrieve the value in PHP using $request->input() which is for POST-requests. For GET requests (which uses the query string to pass data), use $request->query().

However… you don’t need the form. Just pass the value as a query parameter in the link instead:

<td>
    <a href="{{ url('sorting') }}?sort=cat">Cat</a>
</td>

Then in your PHP code, retrieve the value using:

if ($request->query('sort') === 'cat') {
    // your code
}

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