0010-resource-controllers.md

Resource controllers

You can import the model class in your controller

use App\BlogPost

// Now it can be used like this
BlogPost::all();
// Instead of 
\App\BlogPost::all();

Resource controllers overview (diagram)

Resource controllers

If you think about a single resource, like photo - resource controllers let you organize all controller logic around that resource easily

Using resource controllers

Route::resource('posts', 'PostController');

Instead of manually specifying routes

Route::get('/posts', 'PostController@index')->name('blog.index');
Route::get('/posts/{id}', 'PostController@show')->name('blog.show');

Generating a new resource controller with all the resource methods

php artisan make:controller PostController --resource

Resource methods table

Verb	URI	Action	Route Name
GET	/posts	index	posts.index
GET	/posts/create	create	posts.create
POST	/posts	store	posts.store
GET	/posts/{photo}	show	posts.show
GET	/posts/{photo}/edit	edit	posts.edit
PUT/PATCH	/posts/{photo}	update	posts.update
DELETE	/posts/{photo}	destroy	posts.destroy

To enable only certain routes

Route::resource('posts', 'PostController')->only(['index', 'show']);

To disable specific routes

Route::resource('posts', 'PostController')->except(['create', 'store', 'edit', 'update', 'destroy]);

Both examples above will result in the same routes - posts.index and posts.show

Fetching a single model

Model can be fetched using BlogPost::find($id)

To display a 404 Not Found page when model cannot be found, use BlogPost::findOrFail($id)

Route Model Binding

Those 2 examples are equivalent

PostController extends Controller {
	public function show($post) {
		return view('post.show', ['post' => BlogPost::findOrFail($id)]);
	}
}

Above, we manually try to fetch the BlogPost model. findOrFail will show a 404 page if model is not found.

PostController extends Controller {
	public function show(BlogPost $post) {
		return view('post.show', ['post' => $post]);
	}
}

Above we use Route Model Binding. If the method parameter name matches the route segment, eg. route is /posts/{post} the variable name has to be $post. Then type hinting (specyfying the argument type) as the Eloquent model BlogPost, tells Laravel to try and fetch this object by id.

To customize the property by which the model is fetched (using Route Model Binding!), add the getRouteKeyName() method to the model.

public function getRouteKeyName()
{
    return 'slug';
}

With the example above, Laravel would try to find a BlogPost model by slug property.