how to hide results from database until the seacrh is complete in Laravel?

i am making a search for the website so the user can search for results from database

everything is working fine but how can i hide results until the user complete the search?

this is the controller:

class SearchController extends Controller
{
public function search(Request $request){
    // Get the search value from the request
    $search = $request->input('search');
    

    // Search in the title and body columns from the posts table
    $classes = Classes::query()
        ->where('course_name', 'LIKE', "%{$search}%")
        ->orWhere('course_lecturer', 'LIKE', "%{$search}%")
        ->get();


    // Return the search view with the results compacted
    return view('search', compact('classes'));
}
}

and here is the view:

<div class="container">
<h1>Search</h1>
<form action="{{ route('search') }}" method="GET">
    <input style="font-family: Frutiger" dir="rtl" type="text" placeholder="search" name="search" required/>
    <button style="font-family: Frutiger" class="col-md-12 btn btn-primary" type="submit">Search</button>
</form>  
</div>
@if($classes->isNotEmpty())
@foreach ($classes as $classes)
    <div class="post-list text-center">
        <p>{{ $classes->course_name }}</p>
        <p>{{ $classes->course_lecturer }}</p>
        <a target="_blank" href="{{ $classes->file_link }}"><img src="{{ $classes->file_link }}" href="{{ $classes->file_link }}"  width="150px" height="300px"></a>
        <hr>
        
    </div>
@endforeach
@else 
<div>
    <h2 class="text-center">No posts found</h2>
</div>
@endif

so my problem is the view is showing all the results before the user search and i want results to be hidden until the search is complete

how to achieve that?

Answer

it’s because in first load of the page search is null so you’re returning all of the database!

You can fix it like this:

class SearchController extends Controller
{
public function search(Request $request){
    // Get the search value from the request
    $search = $request->input('search');
    $classes = [];
    if($search) {
    // Search in the title and body columns from the posts table
        $classes = Classes::query()
            ->where('course_name', 'LIKE', "%{$search}%")
            ->orWhere('course_lecturer', 'LIKE', "%{$search}%")
            ->get();
    }

    // Return the search view with the results compacted
    return view('search', compact('classes'));
}
}