Using Resource Routes and Controller in Laravel

Using resource is one of the good way of making restful api end points in laravel. We can easily make a set of routes and associated functionality on controller with naming conventions as well.

We start with resource controller. Let’s take an example of an article.

Now, we can create ArticlesController using following artisan command.

php artisan make:controller ArticlesController --resource

Now, just look at the controller inside app/Http/Controllers/ directory you will see following methods in ArticlesController,

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;

class ArticlesController extends Controller
{
    /**
     * Display a listing of the resource. 
     * 
     * @return \Illuminate\Http\Response 
     */
    public function index()
    {
    }

    /** 
     * Show the form for creating a new resource. 
     * 
     * @return \Illuminate\Http\Response 
     */
    public function create()
    {
    }

    /** 
     * Store a newly created resource in storage. 
     * 
     * @param \Illuminate\Http\Request $request 
     * @return \Illuminate\Http\Response 
     */
    public function store(Request $request)
    {
    }

    /** 
     * Display the specified resource. 
     * 
     * @param int $id 
     * @return \Illuminate\Http\Response 
     */
    public function show($id)
    {
    }

    /** 
     * Show the form for editing the specified resource. 
     * 
     * @param int $id 
     * @return \Illuminate\Http\Response 
     */
    public function edit($id)
    {
    }

    /** 
     * Update the specified resource in storage. 
     * 
     * @param \Illuminate\Http\Request $request 
     * @param int $id 
     * @return \Illuminate\Http\Response 
     */
    public function update(Request $request, $id)
    {
    }

    /** 
     * Remove the specified resource from storage. 
     * 
     * @param int $id 
     * @return \Illuminate\Http\Response 
     */
    public function destroy($id)
    {
    }
}

When we use resource option while creating controller then all restful methods are created. We can add all necessary codes to make the above methods working as per our requirements.

Also Read: Custom helper function in laravel

Now, we can create routes for each of these controller methods by adding following line to web.php

Route::resource('articles','ArticlesController');

Above code will register all restful routes to the ArticlesController. We can list out the articles routes using artisan command like this,

php artisan route:list

Registered routes are:

GET | HEAD  articles                 articles.index     App\Http\Controllers\ArticlesController@index 
POST        articles                 articles.store     App\Http\Controllers\ArticlesController@store 
GET | HEAD  articles/create          articles.create    App\Http\Controllers\ArticlesController@create 
GET | HEAD  articles/{article}       articles.show      App\Http\Controllers\ArticlesController@show 
PUT | PATCH articles/{articles}      articles.update    App\Http\Controllers\ArticlesController@update 
DELETE      articles/{articles}      articles.destroy   App\Http\Controllers\ArticlesController@destroy 
GET | HEAD  articles/{articles}/edit articles.edit      App\Http\Controllers\ArticlesController@edit

In this way, we can create resource controller with restful methods so that we can register routes to those methods accordingly.