Always show a paginator on Laravel 5.1

Laravel 5.1 provides a convenient way to show a paginator when rendering a collection. When you build a query and use the method paginate(), a new method is available in your Blade template to print the paginator:

{!! $collection->render() !!}

This method renders ―by default and when used with paginate()― a Bootstrap 3-compliant paginator like on the left side of the following image:

It's pretty cool but the paginator will not be rendered if the collection has only one page:

On the side of Laravel paginate() returns a Illuminate\Pagination\LengthAwarePaginator. Let's check the rendering.

<?php

class LengthAwarePaginator
{
    // ...
    public function render(Presenter $presenter = null)
    {
        if (is_null($presenter) && static::$presenterResolver) {
            $presenter = call_user_func(static::$presenterResolver, $this);
        }

        $presenter = $presenter ?: new BootstrapThreePresenter($this);

        return $presenter->render();
    }
    // ...

We see that $collection->render() calls the method render() of the Presenter given as an argument or Illuminate\Pagination\BootstrapThreePresenter by default.

Let's check the rendering of the default Presenter:

<?php

class BootstrapThreeProvider
{

    // ...
    public function render()
    {
        if ($this->hasPages()) {
            return sprintf(
                '<ul class="pagination">%s %s %s</ul>',
                $this->getPreviousButton(),
                $this->getLinks(),
                $this->getNextButton()
            );
        }

        return '';
    }
    // ...

So the paginator is not rendered if BootstrapThreePresenter#hasPages() returns false:

<?php

class BootstrapThreeProvider
{
    // ...
    public function hasPages()
    {
        return $this->paginator->hasPages();
    }

Well, the solution to render the paginator in any case is quite easy now. Let's create a new Presenter which extends BootstrapThreePresenter and overrides the method hasPages():

<?php
namespace App\Presenters;

use Illuminate\Pagination\BootstrapThreePresenter;

class PermanentBootstrapPresenter extends BootstrapThreePresenter
{
   public function hasPages()
   {
      return true;
   }
}

Save the file in app/Presenters/PermanentBootstrapPresenter.php.

Now that we have our custom Presenter we need to tell the collection to use it instead of BootstrapThreePresenter. To do that, replace the call

{!! $collection->render() !!}

with the following:

{!! $collection->render(new App\Presenters\PermanentBootstrapPresenter($collection)) !!}

Now the paginator will be rendered even if there is only one page:

Enjoy!