Laravel Sieve

A library to handle filtering and sorting for your APIs

Filters like /pets?name:in=Snoopy,Hobbes will be applied to your query builder instance and only results matching that criteria will return

Installation

First, use composer to require the package as below:

composer require ans-group/laravel-sieve

In Laravel the service provider will be automatically discovered.

If you are using Lumen you will need to register the service provider in the "Register Service Providers" section of bootstrap/app.php:

$app->register(UKFast\Sieve\SieveServiceProvider::class);

Usage

Sieve uses an expressive API to configure these filters:

<?php

class Pet extends Model implements Searchable
{
    public function sieve(Sieve $sieve)
    {
        $sieve->configure(fn ($filter) => [
           'name' => $filter->string(),
           'breed' => $filter->enum(['Beagle', 'Tiger']),
        ]);
    }
}

<?php

class PetController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {
        return Pets::query()->search()->paginate();
    }
}

Filters

Filters are done in the query parameters with the format property:operator=term, for example

• name:eq=Bob - WHERE name = 'Bob'
• age:lt=20 - WHERE age < 20
• employed:eq=true - WHERE employed = 1

By default, if no operator is specified, it will default to eq so name=Bob will expand to name:eq=Bob

Like & Not Like

The string filter also supports like and not like operators. To use these you should use * as the wildcard rather than % as you would in a typical database query.

For instance first_name:lk=Sam* would match Sam, Samuel and Samantha.

Sorting

You can set the fields that can be sortable when setting up your model.
You can pass an array of fields as the second parameter of configure.
It does not have to match the filterable, allowing total control.

<?php

class Pet extends Model implements Searchable
{
    public function sieve(Sieve $sieve)
    {
        $sieve->configure(fn ($filter) => [
             'name' => $filter->string(),
             'breed' => $filter->enum(['Beagle', 'Tiger']),
          ],
          ['name']       
        );
    }
}

Sieve will also allow consumers of your API to specify sort order. You can do this by sort=property:direction

• sort=age:asc
• sort=id:desc

If you do not specify a direction (for instance sort=age) then the sorting will be carried out in ascending order.

You can specify more than one column to sort by as a comma separated list. These will be applied in the order given. For instance sort=age:asc,name:asc will return people in age order, then alphabetically.

By default, MySQL will sort null values first for ascending sorts and last for descending sorts. Depending on the context of the column this may not be the desired functionality. You can change this using the following URL queries:

• sort=priority:asc_nulls_last
• sort=priority:desc_nulls_first

You can set a default sort using the setDefaultSort on theSieve class. The default sort uses the database column name rather than the mapped property name, meaning you can use the default sort property without having a map set up.

$sieve->setDefaultSort('name', 'asc')

Available Filters

String

The basic filter. Ideal for textual data, implements eq, neq, in, nin, lk and nlk

<?php
$filter->string()

Numeric

Ideal for numerical data, on top of the basic operators, it also provides lt (less than) and gt (greater than)

<?php
$filter->numeric()

Enum

Same as the string filter but with extra validation. Will throw an exception if the user gives an invalid value

<?php
$filter->enum(['HR', 'RnD'])

Boolean

Only provides eq and neq. Also takes two arguments to specify what your true and false values are in the DB

<?php
$filter->boolean() // defaults to 1 and 0
$filter->boolean('Yes', 'No') // search for Yes and No in the database

Date

Provides the same operations as numeric

<?php
$filter->date(),

You can get type hinting for these filters by specifying FilterBuilder when using the configure method

<?php
$sieve->configure(fn (FilterBuilder $filter) [
    'name' => $filter->string(),
]);

Relationships

You can filter on relationships using the for method on the filter builder

<?php
$sieve->configure(fn ($filter) => [
    'owner_name' => $filter->for('owner.name')->string()
])

You can also use the for method if your API properties don't match column names in the database, for example

<?php
$sieve->configure(fn ($filter) => [
    'date_created' => $filter->for('created_at')->date()
])

Wrapping Filters

You can easily wrap all the available filters to decorate their behaviour. A good example of this is if your API has some kind of computed property

A very simple example might be you have a price property that's stored in pence in the DB, but displayed as pounds in the API (not necessarily good practice, but works for the example)

We can still filter on this by setting up a wrapper that will modify the consumers query before passing it to the filter:

<?php

class PenceFilter implements WrapsFilter
{
    protected $filter;

    public function setFilter($filter)
    {
        $this->filter = $filter;
    }

    public function modifyQuery($query, SearchTerm $search)
    {
        $pence = $search->term() * 100;
         // will do a better API for making new search terms later
        $newTerm = new SearchTerm($search->property(), $search->operator(), $search->column(), $pence);

        $this->filter->modifyQuery($query, $search);
    }

    public function operators()
    {
        return $this->filter->operators();
    }
}

This can be used by doing the following:

$sieve->configure(fn ($filter) => [
    'price' => $filter->wrap(new PenceFilter)->numeric(),
])

Now when the user searches for price:eq=1.50 the database query will instead be WHERE price = 150

It's worth noting that wrap can be called multiple times and the builder will repeatedly re-wrap

Contributing

We welcome contributions to this package that will be beneficial to the community.

You can reach out to our open-source team via open-source@ukfast.co.uk who will get back to you as soon as possible.

Please refer to our CONTRIBUTING file for more information.

Security

If you think you have identified a security vulnerability, please contact our team via security@ukfast.co.uk who will get back to you as soon as possible, rather than using the issue tracker.

Licence

This project is licenced under the MIT Licence (MIT). Please see the Licence file for more information.