Cleaner Laravel Queries: Use Conditional Clauses Instead of If-Else

Sometimes, there are Laravel queries that only need to run under certain conditions. Previously, I used if-else to do this. For example:

$filterCategoryId = $request->input('category_id'); $query = Post::query(); if ($filterCategoryId) { $query->where('category_id', $filterCategoryId); } $posts = $query->get(); 

The code above will take all data from the Post model. If there is a category_id filter from the request, the data will be filtered based on the category_id column.

Although it's working, the code above can be written in a cleaner way using conditional clauses.

Conditional clauses in Laravel are done by adding the when method to the query builder. Here's how:

1. Move the if condition to the first argument of the when method.
2. Move the query inside the if block to the second argument of the when method as a closure.

For example:

$filterCategoryId = $request->input('category_id'); $posts = Post::when( $filterCategoryId, fn ($query) => $query->where('category_id', $filterCategoryId) )->get(); 

By using conditional clauses, the code will now look cleaner than using if-else.