Laravel: Sorting Polymophic Relations

Question

HOW TO

1. In the Student Controller, how to sort the results by student name?

2. How to sort the results by student's guardian name?

---

TABLE STRUCTURE

• taxonomies

  • id
  • entity_type - It contains the class name of the owning model.
  • entity_id - It contains the ID value of the student.

• students

  • id
  • name

• guardians

  • id
  • student_id
  • name

---

CONTROLLER

• StudentController.php

  public function getStudents()
  {
      return Taxonomy::with([
              'entity', 
              'entity.guardian'
          ])
          ->where('entity_type', 'Student')
          ->get();
  }
  

---

MODEL

• Taxonomy.php

  public function entity()
  {
      return $this->morphTo();
  }
  

• Student.php

  public function taxonomies()
  {
      return $this->morphMany('App\Taxonomy', 'entity');
  }
  
  public function guardian()
  {
      return $this->hasOne('App\Guardian');
  }
  

• Guardian.php

  public function student()
  {
      return $this->belongsTo('App\Student');
  }
  

Answer 1

Use sortBy():

$taxonomies = Taxonomy::with('entity.guardian')
    ->where('entity_type', 'Student')
    ->get();

// Solution #1: Sort results by student name.
$sortedTaxonomies = $taxonomies->sortBy('entity.name');
return $sortedTaxonomies->values();

// Solution #2: Sort results by student's guardian name.
$sortedTaxonomies = $taxonomies->sortBy('entity.guardian.name');
return $sortedTaxonomies->values();