Laravel - capture all input names starting with category_id at controller? - laravel-8

Question

In my view I have several category_id inputs.
<select id="category_select1" class="form-control" name="category_id1">
#foreach($category as $c)
<option value="{{$c->id}}">{{$c->name}}</option>
#endforeach
</select>
<select id="category_select2" class="form-control" name="category_id2">
#foreach($category2 as $c)
<option value="{{$c->id}}">{{$c->name}}</option>
#endforeach
</select>
There might be more selectboxes like this so I want to get all of them no mater how many selectboxes there. All the selectbox names will be like category_id1, category_id2.. etc.
$request->input('category_id.*');
But this returns null. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

You should use arrays:
#foreach($categories as $i => $category)
<select id="category_select{{$i}}" class="form-control" name="category_id[]">
#foreach($category as $c)
<option value="{{$c->id}}">{{$c->name}}</option>
#endforeach
</select>
#endforeach
and in the controller simply use:
$categories = $request->input('category_id');
foreach($categories as $category_id) {
// ...
}
$request->input('category_id') will be an array of ids
Your solution (different named inputs) is not much reliable.
In any case if you want to use that,
you can use the collections to filter the request inputs by the name to get the categories' ids
Eg.
use Illuminate\Support\Str;
...
$categories = collect($request->all())->filter(function($value, $key) {
return Str::startsWith($key, 'category_id');
})->toArray();