Check for and get value from filter query string

[keithbrinks]

I'm potentially missing something obvious, but I've been searching around and haven't been able to find anything.

Normally in Laravel, if you pass a parameter in the query string (i.e. myurl.com?foo=bar) you can get bar via request():

$foo = request('foo')

When using filters, i.e. filter[foo]=bar I'd like to do the same, but because this is creating an array within the request object, I'm doing the following:

$foo = request('filter') && array_key_exists('foo', request('filter')) ? request('filter')['foo'] : null;

I'm finding myself repeating this pattern and I'm thinking there must be a cleaner way?

Thanks!