How To Order Query Results in Laravel Eloquent

In a previous part of this series, you learned how to obtain database records using the all() method from within an Eloquent model. You may recall using a method called sortDesc(), which was used to sort the records in descending order.

The sortDesc() method is part of the Collection class, a powerful Laravel utility class that works as an improved version of native PHP arrays. Instead of ordering results within the database query itself, this method will invert the order of a collection, so that the last item appears first in the collection. While that works well for smaller result sets, it doesn’t offer the same flexibility as sorting the results in the database query itself.

To sort results in the database query, you’ll need to use the orderBy() method, and provide the table field you want to use as criteria for ordering. This will give you more flexibility to build a query that will obtain only the results you need from the database.

You’ll now change the code in your routes/web.php file to show results ordered from newest to oldest, based on the created_at table field.

Open this file in your code editor:

routes/web.php

This is how the code looks like now:

<?php
 
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Route;
use App\Models\Link;
use App\Models\LinkList;
 
/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Web Routes
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Here is where you can register web routes for your application. These
| routes are loaded by the RouteServiceProvider within a group which
| contains the "web" middleware group. Now create something great!
|
*/
 
Route::get('/', function () {
    $links = Link::all()->sortDesc();
    return view('index', [
        'links' => $links,
        'lists' => LinkList::all()
    ]);
});
 
Route::get('/{slug}', function ($slug) {
    $list = LinkList::where('slug', $slug)->first();
    if (!$list) {
        abort(404);
    }
 
    return view('index', [
        'list' => $list,
        'links' => $list->links,
        'lists' => LinkList::all()
    ]);
})->name('link-list');
 

Notice that the /{slug} route, which is responsible for listing the links by slug, currently doesn’t use any sorting method. Links are obtained through the list variable, highlighted in the code, using the relationship defined in the LinkList model.

If you add multiple links to a list now, the query will return results ordered from oldest to newest by default. Although you could use the sortDesc() method to reorder the collection within the $list->links call, using the orderBy() method provides more flexibility and allows you to include additional filtering conditions later. You can chain this method with a where() call for even more fine-grained results.

Replace the highlighted line in the previous code sample with the following line:

'links' => $list->links()->orderBy('created_at', 'desc')->get(),

Notice that this time we’re invoking the built-in query builder by calling the $list->links() method, which refers to the relationship method defined in the LinkList class. This is different from calling $list->links as a class property (without the parenthesis), which will invoke a magic method in the model to fetch all links related to that list.

This is how the full routes/web.php file should look like once you’re finished:

<?php

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Route;
use App\Models\Link;
use App\Models\LinkList;

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Web Routes
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Here is where you can register web routes for your application. These
| routes are loaded by the RouteServiceProvider within a group which
| contains the "web" middleware group. Now create something great!
|
*/

Route::get('/', function () {
    $links = Link::all()->sortDesc();
    return view('index', [
        'links' => $links,
        'lists' => LinkList::all()
    ]);
});

Route::get('/{slug}', function ($slug) {
    $list = LinkList::where('slug', $slug)->first();
    if (!$list) {
        abort(404);
    }

    return view('index', [
        'list' => $list,
        'links' => $list->links()->orderBy('created_at', 'desc')->get(),
        'lists' => LinkList::all()
    ]);
})->name('link-list');

Save and close the file. Now, add a couple new links using the link:new Artisan command. You can use the default list:

docker-compose exec app php artisan link:new

Output
 Link URL:
 > https://laravel.com/docs/8.x/eloquent

 Link Description:
 > Laravel Eloquent Docs

 Link List (leave blank to use default):
 > 

New Link:
https://laravel.com/docs/8.x/eloquent - Laravel Eloquent Docs
Listed in: default

 Is this information correct? (yes/no) [no]:
 > yes

Saved.

If you reload the default link list page, you should now obtain links from newest to oldest:

http://localhost:8000/default

Likewise, if you would prefer to order links alphabetically by the link description, you would have to change the line to use that table field in the method call like this:

'links' => $list->links()->orderBy('description', 'asc')->get(),

This is how the links would be ordered after such change:

In the next part of this series, you’ll learn how to obtain the total result count from a Laravel Eloquent query.