Jun 27, 2016 | laravel, laravel 5.3

The new $loop variable in Laravel 5.3

This is a series of posts on New Features in Laravel 5.3.

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Warning: This post is over a year old. I don't always update old posts with new information, so some of this information may be out of date.

Let's take a look at another new feature that's coming in Laravel 5.3.

What are Blade directives?

Laravel's Blade templating language provides something called "directives", which are custom tags—often control structures—that are prefaced with @. If you've ever written templates with Blade, you're likely familiar with @if, @foreach, and so on.

In general, these control structure directive simply emulate their PHP analogs; for example, @if(condition) is exactly the same as <?php if (condition):.

Introducing the `$loop` variable

In 5.3, the @foreach directive is getting a bit of a superpower, in the form of a new $loop variable that will be available inside every @foreach loop.

The $loop variable is a stdClass object that provides meta information about the loop you're currently inside. Take a look at the properties it exposes:

index: the 0-based index of the current item in the loop; 0 would mean "first item"
iteration: the 1-based index of the current item in the loop; 1 would mean "first item"
remaining: how many items remain in the loop; if current item is first of three, would return 2
count: the count of items in the loop
first: boolean; whether this is the first item in the loop
last: boolean; whether this is the last item in the loop
depth: integer; how many "levels" deep this loop is; returns 1 for a loop, 2 for a loop within a loop, etc.
parent: if this loop is within another @foreach loop, returns a reference to the $loop variable for the parent loop item; otherwise returns null

Most of this is pretty self-explanatory; it means you can do something like this:

<ul>
@foreach ($pages as $page)
   <li>{{ $page->title }} ({{ $loop->iteration }} / {{ $loop->count }})</li>
@endforeach
</ul>

But you also get a reference to parent $loop variables when you have a loop-within-a-loop. You can use depth to determine whether this is a loop-within-a-loop, and parent to grab the $loop variable of its parent. That opens up templating options like this:

<ul>
@foreach ($pages as $page)
    <li>{{ $loop->iteration }}: {{ $page->title }}
        @if ($page->hasChildren())
        <ul>
        @foreach ($page->children() as $child)
            <li>{{ $loop->parent->iteration }}.{{ $loop->iteration }}:
                {{ $child->title }}</li>
        @endforeach
        </ul>
        @endif
    </li>
@endforeach
</ul>

That's it!

Comments? I'm @stauffermatt on Twitter

Tags: laravel • laravel 5.3

This is part of a series of posts on New Features in Laravel 5.3:

Introducing Laravel Echo: An In-Depth Walk-Through

Jun 16, 2016 | laravel, laravel 5.3, echo, websockets
The new $loop variable in Laravel 5.3

Jun 27, 2016 | laravel, laravel 5.3
Customizing additional parameters in FirstOrCreate in Laravel 5.3

Jun 29, 2016 | laravel, laravel 5.3, eloquent
The new cache() global helper in Laravel 5.3

Jul 6, 2016 | laravel, laravel 5.3
Advanced operations with Collection::where in Laravel 5.3

Jul 8, 2016 | laravel, laravel 5.3
New JSON-column where() and update() syntax in Laravel 5.3

Jul 8, 2016 | laravel, laravel 5.3, eloquent
Image dimension validation rules in Laravel 5.3

Jul 25, 2016 | laravel, laravel 5.3
Customizing pagination templates in Laravel 5.3

Jul 26, 2016 | laravel, laravel 5.3
Routing changes in Laravel 5.3

Jul 27, 2016 | laravel, laravel 5.3, routing
5.3 feature announcement notes from Laracon

Jul 27, 2016 | laravel, laravel 5.3, laravel scout, laravel passport, mailable
Introducing Laravel Scout

Jul 29, 2016 | laravel, laravel 5.3, laravel scout
Introducing Laravel Passport

Jul 30, 2016 | laravel, laravel 5.3, laravel passport, oauth
Introducing Mailables in Laravel 5.3

Aug 5, 2016 | laravel, laravel 5.3, mail, laravel mailables
Directory structure changes in Laravel 5.3

Aug 8, 2016 | laravel, laravel 5.3
The new Notification system in Laravel 5.3

Oct 19, 2016 | laravel, laravel 5.3, laravel notifications, notifications
Using Vue in Laravel 5.3, with the Vue bootstrap and sample component

Dec 21, 2016 | laravel, laravel 5.3, vuejs, vueify, authorization
Update to queue workers in Laravel 5.3

Dec 21, 2016 | laravel, laravel 5.3, queues
Defining console commands via closure in Laravel 5.3

Jan 30, 2017 | laravel, laravel 5.3, artisan

The new $loop variable in Laravel 5.3

What are Blade directives?

Introducing the $loop variable

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Introducing the `$loop` variable