Published on June 18, 2025
Programming is hard - or so you might see it when you are trying to learn it - but if you give up, you will not make great things. ALX, a coding platform training programmers in Python and other languages has this as its mantra, "Do hard things!" Taylor Otwel, Laravel's creator, though, has a different meaning when he says, "do the hard things first".
If Laravel had Zen statements like Python does, this would feature first in the list - given that it comes from its creator himself. Well, what does it mean, though.
It means that if you want to succeed at creating a big code project, build the hard parts of it first and finish with the easy ones. I would say this is open for discussion. Speaking of hard things, figure out what the below controller does:
Full Code Snippet
<?php
namespace App\Exports;
use App\Models\CqiProject;
use Maatwebsite\Excel\Concerns\FromCollection;
use Maatwebsite\Excel\Concerns\WithHeadings;
use Maatwebsite\Excel\Concerns\WithMapping;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;
class CqiProjectReportExport implements FromCollection, WithHeadings, WithMapping
{
protected $filters;
public function __construct(array $filters = [])
{
$this->filters = $filters;
}
/**
* Fetch the data for the report.
*
* @return \Illuminate\Support\Collection
*/
public function collection()
{
$query = CqiProject::query()
->select(
'cqi_projects.*',
DB::raw('COUNT(audits.id) as audit_count'),
DB::raw('AVG(audits.score) as average_audit_score')
)
->leftJoin('audits', 'cqi_projects.id', '=', 'audits.cqi_project_id')
->groupBy('cqi_projects.id');
// Apply filters if provided
if (!empty($this->filters['status'])) {
$query->where('cqi_projects.status', $this->filters['status']);
}
if (!empty($this->filters['methodology'])) {
$query->where('cqi_projects.methodology', $this->filters['methodology']);
}
if (!empty($this->filters['progress_min'])) {
$query->where('cqi_projects.initial_progress', '>=', $this->filters['progress_min']);
}
return $query->get();
}
/**
* Define the headings for the CSV.
*
* @return array
*/
public function headings(): array
{
return [
'Project Name',
'Status',
'Methodology',
'Progress (%)',
'Audit Count',
'Average Audit Score',
'Created At',
];
}
/**
* Map each row of data to the CSV format.
*
* @param mixed $project
* @return array
*/
public function map($project): array
{
return [
$project->project_name,
$project->status,
$project->methodology,
$project->initial_progress,
$project->audit_count,
number_format($project->average_audit_score, 2),
$project->created_at->format('Y-m-d'),
];
}
}Love this nugget?
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