Laravel default orderBy

Is there a clean way to enable certain models to be ordered by a property by default? It could work by extending the laravel's QueryBuilder, but to do so, you'll have to rewire some of it's core features - bad practice.

reason

The main point of doing this is - one of my models get's heavily reused by many others and right now you have to resort the order over and over again. Even when using a closure for this - you still have to call it. It would be much better to be able to apply a default sorting, so everyone who uses this model, and does not provide custom sorting options, will receive records sorted by the default option. Using a repository is not an option here, because it get's eager loaded.

SOLUTION

Extending the base model:

protected $orderBy;
protected $orderDirection = 'ASC';

public function scopeOrdered($query)
{
	if ($this->orderBy)
	{
		return $query->orderBy($this->orderBy, $this->orderDirection);
	}

	return $query;
}

public function scopeGetOrdered($query)
{
	return $this->scopeOrdered($query)->get();
}

In your model:

protected $orderBy = 'property';
protected $orderDirection = 'DESC';

// ordering eager loaded relation
public function anotherModel()
{
	return $this->belongsToMany('SomeModel', 'some_table')->ordered();
}

In your controller:

MyModel::with('anotherModel')->getOrdered();
// or
MyModel::with('anotherModel')->ordered()->first();

Before Laravel 5.2

Nowadays we can solve this problem also with global scopes, introduced in Laravel 4.2 (correct me if I'm wrong). We can define a scope class like this:

<?php namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\ScopeInterface;

class OrderScope implements ScopeInterface {

    private $column;

    private $direction;

    public function __construct($column, $direction = 'asc')
    {
        $this->column = $column;
        $this->direction = $direction;
    }

    public function apply(Builder $builder, Model $model)
    {
        $builder->orderBy($this->column, $this->direction);

        // optional macro to undo the global scope
        $builder->macro('unordered', function (Builder $builder) {
            $this->remove($builder, $builder->getModel());
            return $builder;
        });
    }

    public function remove(Builder $builder, Model $model)
    {
        $query = $builder->getQuery();
        $query->orders = collect($query->orders)->reject(function ($order) {
            return $order['column'] == $this->column && $order['direction'] == $this->direction;
        })->values()->all();
        if (count($query->orders) == 0) {
            $query->orders = null;
        }
    }
}

Then, in your model, you can add the scope in the boot() method:

protected static function boot() {
    parent::boot();
    static::addGlobalScope(new OrderScope('date', 'desc'));
}

Now the model is ordered by default. Note that if you define the order also manually in the query: MyModel::orderBy('some_column'), then it will only add it as a secondary ordering (used when values of the first ordering are the same), and it will not override. To make it possible to use another ordering manually, I added an (optional) macro (see above), and then you can do: MyModel::unordered()->orderBy('some_column')->get().

Laravel 5.2 and up

Laravel 5.2 introduced a much cleaner way to work with global scopes. Now, the only thing we have to write is the following:

<?php namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Scope;

class OrderScope implements Scope
{

    private $column;

    private $direction;

    public function __construct($column, $direction = 'asc')
    {
        $this->column = $column;
        $this->direction = $direction;
    }

    public function apply(Builder $builder, Model $model)
    {
        $builder->orderBy($this->column, $this->direction);
    }
}

Then, in your model, you can add the scope in the boot() method:

protected static function boot() {
    parent::boot();
    static::addGlobalScope(new OrderScope('date', 'desc'));
}

To remove the global scope, simply use:

MyModel::withoutGlobalScope(OrderScope::class)->get();

Solution without extra scope class

If you don't like to have a whole class for the scope, you can (since Laravel 5.2) also define the global scope inline, in your model's boot() method:

protected static function boot() {
    parent::boot();
    static::addGlobalScope('order', function (Builder $builder) {
        $builder->orderBy('date', 'desc');
    });
}

You can remove this global scope using this:

MyModel::withoutGlobalScope('order')->get();

In Laravel 5.7, you can now simply use addGlobalScope inside the model's boot function:

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder;

protected static function boot()
{
    parent::boot();

    static::addGlobalScope('order', function (Builder $builder) {
        $builder->orderBy('created_at', 'desc');
    });
}

In the above example, I order the model by created_at desc to get the most recent records first. You can change that to fit your needs.

Another way of doing this could be by overriding the newQuery method in your model class. This only works if you never, ever want results to be ordered by another field (since adding another ->orderBy() later won't remove this default one). So this is probably not what you'd normally want to do, but if you have a requirement to always sort a certain way, then this will work:

protected $orderBy;
protected $orderDirection = 'asc';

/**
 * Get a new query builder for the model's table.
 *
 * @param bool $ordered
 * @return \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder
 */
public function newQuery($ordered = true)
{
	$query = parent::newQuery();    

	if (empty($ordered)) {
		return $query;
	}    

	return $query->orderBy($this->orderBy, $this->orderDirection);
}

Yes you would need to extend Eloquent to always do this as standard for any query. What's wrong with adding an order by statement to the query when you need it ordered? That is the cleanest way, ie, you dont need to 'unhack' Eloquent to get results by natural order.

MyModel::orderBy('created_at', 'asc')->get();

Other than that the closest thing to what you want would be to create query scopes in your models.

public function scopeOrdered($query)
{
    return $query->orderBy('created_at', 'asc')->get();
}

You can then call ordered as a method instead of get to retrieve your ordered results.

$data = MyModel::where('foo', '=', 'bar')->ordered();

If you wanted this across different models you could create a base class and just extend it to the models you want to have access to this scoped method.

you should use eloquent global scope that can apply to all queries(also you can set parameter for it).

And for relations you can use this useful trick:

class Category extends Model {
    public function posts(){
        return $this->hasMany('App\Models\Post')->orderBy('title');
    }
}

this will add order by to all posts when we get them from a category. If you add an order by to your query, this default order by will cancel!

An slightly improved answer given by Joshua Jabbour

you can use the code he offered in a Trait, and then add that trait to the models where you want them to be ordered.

<?php

namespace App\Traits;

trait AppOrdered {
    protected $orderBy = 'created_at';
    protected $orderDirection = 'desc';

    public function newQuery($ordered = true)
    {
        $query = parent::newQuery();

        if (empty($ordered)) {
            return $query;
        }

        return $query->orderBy($this->orderBy, $this->orderDirection);
    }
}

then in whichever model you want the data to be ordered you can use use :

class PostsModel extends Model {

    use AppOrdered;
    ....

now everytime you request that model, data will be ordered, that's somehow more organized, but my answers is Jabbour's answer.

A note from my experience, never to use orderBy and GroupBy such term on global scope. Otherwise you will easily face database errors while fetching related models in other places.

Error may be something like:

> "ORDER BY "created_at" is ambiguous"

In such case the solution can be giving table name before column names in your query scope.

"ORDER BY posts.created_at"

Thanks.

I built a mini Laravel package that can add default orderBy in your Eloquent model.

Using the DefaultOrderBy trait of this package, you can set the default column you want to orderBy.

use Stephenjude/DefaultModelSorting/Traits/DefaultOrderBy;

class Article extends Model
{
    use DefaultOrderBy;

    protected static $orderByColumn = 'title';
}

You can also set the default orderBy direction by setting the $orderByColumnDirection property.

protected static $orderByColumnDirection = 'desc';