How to add a where condition to my search?

I need to add a where condition to my search function, but I don’t know how to add this to my final results. Now, for an example: now, my search is searching for the name in table career_solutions, but it searching in the entire table, and I need to search only by category 2 for example. So, the final result should be … Search for example in category 2 (which is Courses).

Here is my form:

<form action="/topic/{{strtolower($category->category)}}/career-solutions" method="POST" role="search">
     {{ csrf_field() }}
     <div class="input-group">
         <input type="text" class="form-control" name="q"
             placeholder="Search content"> <span class="input-group-btn">
             <button type="submit" class="btn btn-default">
                 <span class="glyphicon glyphicon-search"></span>
             </button>
         </span>
     </div>
 </form>

{{ $category->category }} returns me the category name, not the ID of that.

Here is my controller:

public function searchCareer
{
$q = Input::get ( 'q' );


                     $user = CareerSolution::where ( 'subject', 'LIKE', '%' . $q . '%' )
        ->join('role_users' , 'role_users.user_id', '=', 'career_solutions.user_id')
        ->join('roles' , 'roles.id', '=', 'role_users.role_id')
        ->join('users', 'users.id', '=', 'career_solutions.user_id')
        ->join('categories', 'categories.id', '=', 'career_solutions.topic_category_id')
        ->orWhere ( 'career_solutions.user_id', 'LIKE', '%' . $q . '%' )
        ->orWhere ( 'career_solutions.id', '=', 'events.subject')
        ->orWhere('career_solutions.topic_category_id' ,'=', $category->id)
        ->orWhere ( 'career_solutions.user_id', '=', 'users.username')
        ->select('career_solutions.id as id','subject','users.id as user_id','username', 'profile_picture', 'role_id', 'optional', 'topic_category_id','categories.category')
         ->get ();



                     $data['test'] = 'view-career-solutions';
                     $data['link'] = 'search-career-solutions';
                     $data['type'] = 'Career Solution';
                     $data['typee'] = 'briefcase fa-';
                     $topic_id = CareerSolution::select('id', 'subject')
                                            ->get();



        if (count ( $user ) > 0)
                return view ( 'category-search',$data )->withDetails ( $user )->withQuery ( $q )->with(compact('topic_id'))->with(compact('account'));
        else
                return view ( 'category-search',$data )->withMessage ( 'No Details found. Try to search again !' );
}

Answer

You could add another hidden field to pass the category like :

<input type="hidden" name="c" value="{{$category->id }}">

Then in the controller we need to get the parameter :

$c = Input::get ( 'c' );

And as a last step add it before the select like :

...
->where('topic_category_id', $c)
->select('career_solutions.id as id','subject','users.id as user_id','username', 'profile_picture', 'role_id', 'optional', 'topic_category_id','categories.category')
->get();