How to output table data from controller to view?

Question

I'm in the beginning stages of trying to make sense of Laravel and am having trouble displaying the 'illuminate collection object' passed to a blade from a controller.

My print_r is outputting "Illuminate\Support\Collection Object ( [items:protected] => Array ( ) ) 1" which I thought meant that it was seeing one item in the array (just one record in the table currently), but I'm hitting the @else statement so I'm guessing it's actually empty. I'm getting no errors, but I have not been able to display anything from $products despite $title outputting just fine.

public function shop(){
        $products = DB::table('products')->get();
        $data = array(
            'title'=>'Shop',
            'products' => $products
        );
        return view('pages.shop')->with($data);
    }

@section('content')
    <h1>{{$title}}</h1>
    {{ print_r($products) }}
    @if($products->count())
        <ul class="list-group">
            @foreach($products as $product)
                <li class="list-group-item">{{$product->title}}</li>
            @endforeach
        </ul>
    @else
        <p>No products</p>
    @endif
@endsection

Why is my array empty?

You need to output the column name for the product in the list-group-item like {{ $product->name }} — Mike, May 23 '19 at 21:04
Nope, still nothing. I put an @if(count($products)) in there and it's hitting the @else statement, so apparently there is nothing in the array? — V1xIII, May 23 '19 at 21:09
So Eloquent queries will return a Collection class that acts like an array of all your rows as eloquent models. So count($products) may not work, but $products->count() will work. Check out https://laravel.com/docs/5.8/eloquent-collections for more on the Collection class. Anyway in your controller before you return the view, what do you see if you dd($products); ? — Mike, May 23 '19 at 21:12
Also just realized you are using the DB class not eloquent, but either way, make sure there is data in your database, and your connection settings are correct. — Mike, May 23 '19 at 21:19
I migrated and seeded with my current settings, so I'm guessing so. I'll have a look into the DB vs eloquent situation. — V1xIII, May 23 '19 at 21:22
It was related to the blade end of things actually, according to the guy with the accepted answer. He deleted that comment though. — V1xIII, May 30 '19 at 14:45

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 24 '19 at 06:00

On your Controller:

$title = 'Shop';
$products = DB::table('products')->get();

return view('pages.shop', compact('title', 'products');

On your Blade:

I would also suggest to put your unordered list tag <ul> outside of the loop then use @forelse for a cleaner code, like so:

@section('content')
  <h1>{{$title}}</h1>
  <ul class="list-group">
    @forelse($products as $product)
       <li class="list-group-item">{{$product->title}}</li>        
    @empty
       <li class="list-group-item">No products</li>  
    @endforelse
  </ul>
@endsection

This did the trick. I guess it had to do with using "with" instead of "compact"? Also, thanks for the heads up on the forelse loop! — V1xIII, May 26 '19 at 18:37

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered May 24 '19 at 07:10

Try this..........

public function shop()
    {
        $products   = DB::table('products')->get();
        $title      = "Shop";
        return view('pages.shop', compact('products', 'title'));
    }

@section('content')
    <h1>{{ isset($title) ? $title : '-' }}</h1>
    @if($products->count())
        <ul class="list-group">
            @foreach($products as $product)
                <li class="list-group-item">{{ isset($product->title) ? $product->title : '-' }}</li>
            @endforeach
        </ul>
    @else
        <p>No products</p>
    @endif
@endsection

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 23 '19 at 21:19

You can display the data by first passing it as an array to the view

return view('pages.shop')->with('data', $data);

then in the blade

@section('content')
    <h1>{{$data['title']}}</h1>
    @if(count($data['products']))
        <ul class="list-group">
            @foreach($data['products'] as $product)
                <li class="list-group-item">{{$product->title}}</li>
            @endforeach
        </ul>
    @else
        <p>No products</p>
    @endif
@endsection

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered May 24 '19 at 00:12

Pass both $products and $title to the view, I prefer to use compact feels cleaner.

$title = 'shop';
$products = DB::table('products')->get();


return view('pages.shop', compact('title', 'products');

Then in your view you can reference them directly. As you are doing now.

@section('content')
    <h1>{{$title}}</h1>

    @if($products->count())
        <ul class="list-group">
            @foreach($products as $product)
                <li class="list-group-item">{{$product->title}}</li>
            @endforeach
        </ul>
    @else
        <p>No products</p>
    @endif
@endsection

Jithesh Jose · Answer 5 · 2019-05-24T05:59:03.467

In your controller

$title = 'shop';
$products = DB::table('products')->get();
return view('pages.shop', compact('title', 'products');
OR
$products = DB::table('products')->get();
$data = array(
        'title'=>'Shop',
        'products' => $products
);
return view('pages.shop')->with('data',$data);

In your Blade

@section('content')
<h1>{{$title}}</h1>
@if(count($products))
    <ul class="list-group">
        @foreach($products as $product)
            <li class="list-group-item">{{$product->title}}</li>
        @endforeach
    </ul>
@else
    <p>No products</p>
@endif
@endsection

How to output table data from controller to view?

5 Answers5