How to use conditional orderBy clause in Laravel 8 eloquent ?

In Laravel sometimes while creating a eloquent or db builder query you wanted to apply the orderBy clause on basis of some conditions and to achieve it you may use if else condition but laravel 8 itself provides solution to handle such type of situations using when method.

Laravel eloquent when method accepts three parameter first parameter is boolean, second is anonymous function and third is also a function means if first parameter is true then it will call the second parameter function and if first parameter is false then it will execute the third parameter.

In this tutorial we will take a simple example of articles to sort by title and created date, if user select sort by title then apply orderBy title column otherwise default created at column .

So here is the syntax of when

$Model->when(boolean, Function, Function);

Example:

$Model->when($sortBy=='title',function($query){ // if sortBy equals to title 
      return $q->orderBy("title");
}, function($query){                    //  if sortBy not equals to title 
      return $q->orderBy("created_at","DESC"); 
})

In the above example as you can se we created a model and then used when method to execute the if else in laravel way. we passed three parameters to when method first is boolean($sortBy=='title') and two consecutive functions for true and false.

We can also make where query conditional in traditional way using if and else statement as below

Example:

if($sortBy=='title'){
   $Model = $Model->orderBy("title");
}
else{
   $Model = $Model->where("title",'DESC');
}

Sometime we need to check multiple condition or some logic to add the where thus in that case we can use multiple when or if else condition validations in laravel.

Let’s take an example of Article table where we wanted to apply orderBy condition on basis of sortBy user input and then show the records

Example 1 – Laravel conditional orderBy using when

So in this example i will use laravel query builder or eloquent when method to apply if else .

<?php
  
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
  
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\User;
  
class ArticleController extends Controller
{
    /**
     * Display a listing of the resource.
     *
     * @return \Illuminate\Http\Response
     */
    public function index(Request $request)
    { 
        $sortBy=$request->get("sortBy");

        $Article = Article::when($sortBy=='title',function($query){
                     $query->orderBy("title");
                   },function($query){
                     $query->orderBy("created_at",'DESC');
                   })->get(); 
   }
}

Output will be if sortBy is title :

select * from `articles` where order by title

Example 2 – Laravel conditional order by using if else

So in this example i will use laravel query builder or eloquent if else to build conditional query .

<?php
  
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
  
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\User;
  
class ArticleController extends Controller
{
    /**
     * Display a listing of the resource.
     *
     * @return \Illuminate\Http\Response
     */
    public function index()
    { 
         $sortBy=$request->get("sortBy");

        $Article = new Article;
        if($sortBy=='title'){
          $Article=$Article->orderBy("title");
        }
        else if($sortBy=='status'){
          $Article=$Article->orderBy("status");
        }
        else{
          $Article=$Article->where("created_at",'DESC');
        }
         $Article->get();
     
   }
}

Output will be if sortBy is title :

select * from `articles` order by title
# OR
select * from `articles` order by created_at desc

Also Read : How to use conditional where clause in Laravel 8 eloquent ?