First of all, I'm pretty new (noob) on Laravel, and it's awesome. I'm making a blog, and everything is great (In my humble and inexperienced opinion).
I want to display a notification on the navbar if there are articles posted less than 24 hours ago. I've made it, but I'm sure there's is a much better way, because three more SQL queries are needed (One for each category)
In my controller
$newPostEntrevistas = FALSE;
$newPostAcercaDeMi = FALSE;
$newPostEstiloDeVida = FALSE;
$lastPostInterviews = Post::where('category', 'Interviews')->orderBy('created_at', 'desc')->first(['created_at']);
$lastPostAboutMe = Post::where('category', 'About me')->orderBy('created_at', 'desc')->first(['created_at']);
$lastPostLifestyle = Post::where('category', 'Lifestyle')->orderBy('created_at', 'desc')->first(['created_at']);
if ($lastPostInterviews->created_at->diffInHours() < 24) {
$newPostInterviews = TRUE;
}
if ($lastPostAboutMe->created_at->diffInHours() < 24) {
$newPostAboutMe = TRUE;
}
if ($lastPostLifestyle->created_at->diffInHours() < 24) {
$newPostLifestyle = TRUE;
}
Then I pass it to a view like this
$posts = Post::orderBy('created_at', 'desc')->paginate($this->paginationNumber());
return view('pages.index', [
'posts' => $posts,
'newPostInterviews' => $newPostinterviews,
'newPostboutMe' => $newPostAboutMe,
'newPostLifestyle' => $newPostLifestyle,
]);
And in the view I catch it like this (In a partial, actually)
<nav>
<div class="nav-wrapper">
<ul>
<li><a href="/"><i class="fa fa-home"></i> Home</a></li>
<li>
<a href="/interviews">
Interviews
@if($newPostInterviews)
<i class="fa fa-exclamation-circle"></i>
@endif
</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="/lifestyle">
Lifestyle
@if($newPostLifestyle)
<i class="fa fa-exclamation-circle"></i>
@endif
</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="/about-me">
About me
@if($newPostAboutMe)
<i class="fa fa-exclamation-circle"></i>
@endif
</a>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</nav>
As I said, it works fine. But I want to know your opinions on performance and other (and better) ways to achieve that or good practices, etcetera.
Result:
It's in spanish, I translated every variable and route to make it easier for you to understand the idea.
If it's useful for someone I optimized it like this:
$newPosts = DB::table('posts')
->where('created_at', '>=', Carbon::now()->subHours(24)->toDateTimeString())
->groupBy('category')
->select('category', DB::raw('COUNT(category) as number'))
->pluck('number', 'category');
The result is something like:
[
'Interviews' => 5,
'Lifestyle' => 7,
'About me' => 1,
]
And in the view
<nav>
<div class="nav-wrapper">
<ul>
<li><a href="/"><i class="fa fa-home"></i> Home</a></li>
<li>
<a href="/interviews">
Interviews
@if(isset($newPosts['Interviews']))
<span class="badge">{{ $newPosts['Interviews'] }}</span>
@endif
</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="/lifestyle">
Lifestyle
@if(isset($newPosts['Lifestyle']))
<span class="badge">{{ $newPosts['Lifestyle'] }}</span>
@endif
</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="/about-me">
About me
@if(isset($newPosts['About me']))
<span class="badge">{{ $newPosts['About me'] }}</span>
@endif
</a>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</nav>
That way only one query is used and you can show the number of the new posts.
Thanks to willvincent ar Laracasts.