Laravel 4 - How to use 'offset' in stead of 'page' with Eloquent's ->paginate()?

Question

I am migrating an existing REST API to Laravel 4.1, and the API currently uses offset as querystring parameter to specify what the offset of the records needs to be.

I would like to use the default Eloquent's paginate(), but these searches for the page querystring parameter. And of course it uses the page number (like 2) instead of the offset (like 200).

Is there an easy way to configure the paginate function to this situation? Or do I need to use ->skip() and ->take() functions and make the links to the next page myself?

@Anam: I want to use:

$warehouses = Warehouse::orderBy('name')
    ->paginate($perpage);

This works with http://example.org/api/warehouses?page=2, but I want this to work with http://example.org/api/warehouses?offset=200

With the offset I can use:

$warehouses = Warehouse::orderBy('name')
    ->skip($offset)
    ->take($perpage)
    ->get();

But then I cannot use the same controller for the API and the web view. So I would prefer some way to make the first one working.

Answer 1

But then I cannot use the same controller for the API and the web view. So I would prefer some way to make the first one working.

Why not? If you already know ?offset will be available in the API, and ?page in your normal view. Just detect which is found and apply it appropriately.

---

That said, you can retrieve the paginator environment instance the query builder uses and pass it a page number that you define.

$perPage = 50;
$currentPage = 1;

if ($offset = Input::get('offset'))
{
    $currentPage = ($offset / $perPage);
}

Warehouse::resolveConnection()->getPaginator()->setCurrentPage($currentPage);

$warehouses = Warehouse::orderBy('name')->paginate($perpage);

Note that, while I tested this and it works, I don't know how much it will affect other queries that you might run on the same page. Look into it, use with caution.