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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-17T08:29:39+00:00

I am trying to generate a drop-down list with values from a MySQL table

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I am trying to generate a drop-down list with values from a MySQL table using Laravel. The table is simple, two columns – id and category.

The following will retrieve all of the records (categories) but returns an object rather than an array, which is what I need for the drop-down code – 

$categories = Category::all();

The code for the drop-down is:

{{ Form::select('category', $categories, $post->category_id) }}

Ideas?

UPDATE

bgallagh3r suggested using a foreach loop to convert each category to an array. Their code got me close but generated a bunch of funky nested optgrouptags. I was able to get it down to just one optgroup but that is one too many..

$categories = Category::all();
foreach ($categories as $cat)
{
    $category = $cat->to_array();
    $id = $category['id'];
    $value = $category['category'];
    $cats[] = array($id => $value);
}

And then, in the form:

{{ Form::select('categories', $categories)}}

I end up with this HTML:

    <select name="categories">
    <optgroup label="0">
    <option value="1">Department News</option>
    </optgroup>
    <optgroup label="1">
    <option value="2">General</option>
    </optgroup>
   ...
    </select>
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You can try the ‘lists’ function:

    $categories = Category::lists('category', 'id');

    (Only for Laravel 3)
    Or even leave out the ‘id’ parameter, as it will default to the Model key, see http://laravel.com/api/source-class-Laravel.Database.Query.html#596

    $categories = Category::lists('category');

    (For Laravel 4, you do need the second param, see http://laravel.com/api/source-class-Illuminate.Database.Query.Builder.html#1034-1063)

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