Replace eloquent conditionals with "when"

So often we want to apply query conditions based on what a request sends in. Sometimes it's a "search by name" thing, other times we need to filter the records based on some status column.

public function index(Request $request)
{
    $posts = Post::newQuery();

    if ($request->term) {
        $posts->where('name', 'LIKE', "%{$request->term}%");
    }

    if ($request->status) {
        $posts->where('status', $request->status);
    }

    return view('posts.index', ['posts' => $posts->paginate()]);
}

I recently discovered an alternative to using conditionals. The when(condition, callback) method executes the callback when the first parameter evaluates to true - still a conditional, but a bit cleaner.

The example above can be rewritten to this:

public function index(Request $request)
{
    $posts = Post::query()
        ->when($request->term, fn($q, $term) => $q->where('name', 'LIKE', "%{$term}%"))
        ->when($request->status, fn($q, $status) => $q->where('status', $status));

    return view('posts.index', ['posts' => $posts->paginate()]);
}