Typeahead remote with Laravel 4 - Individual pieces working I think, but not working together

Question

I'm relatively green with Laravel and PHP. I'm learning Laravel by way of the documentation and SO/Google. I've clicked on every typeahead/laravel question I could find here, and I just can't seem to find an example that quite fits. This question comes very close. I actually don't see any glaring differences. But then again, that OP was having trouble with remote as well.

I think I'm close, as my various pieces seem to be working individually. Let me explain...

I have a form...

<div class="input-group form-group" id="ingredients">
    {{ Form::label('ingredients', 'Ingredients') }}
    {{ Form::text('ingredients[]', null, array(
        'class' => 'form-control typeahead',
        'data-provide' => 'typeahead',
        'data-items' => '10',
        'id' => 'ingredients')
    ) }}
</div>

... with the script...

<script>
    $('.typeahead').typeahead([
        {
            name: 'ingredients',
            remote: '/recipe/create/%QUERY'
        }
    ]);
</script>

remote: points to this route

Route::get('recipe/create/{query}', 'SearchController@searchIngredients');

Which points to this controller method...

public function searchIngredients($query)
{
    $data = array();
    $results = Ingredient::select ('name')->where('name', 'LIKE', '%' . $query . '%')->get();
    foreach ($results as $result) :
        $data[] = $result->name;
    endforeach;
    var_dump($data);
    return Response::json($data);
}

When I enter some text in the form, I do see the browser request:

If I navigate directly to the remote URL, I do see my var_dump as I would expect:

E.g. /recipe/create/s shows me

array(4) {
    [0] "Sugar"
    [1] "Cheese"
    [2] "Salt"
    [3] "rasins"
}

I'm clearly missing something, and I have a suspicion that it's simple, though I could be wrong there too. When I begin typing in the form field, there is no dropdown.

I'm thinking my controller method is never being called when typing, or I would be seeing the var_dump with every browser request, right?

If that's the case, am I broken at the remote: bit of the script?

---

EDIT

Answer 1

Try taking var_dump out of the controller - typeahead is expecting valid JSON as a response.

Answer 2

This will work and tested:

$data = array();

$results = Student::select ('id')->where('id', 'LIKE',$query . '%')->get();
foreach ($results as $result):
    $data[] = $result->id."";
endforeach;
return Response::json($data);

Answer 3

By the way, you could have done

$results = Ingredient::select ('name')->where('name', 'LIKE', '%' . $query . '%')->        

return Response::json($results);