What is the way to beautify the code structure ? (Laravel) - php

Question

I started to code new website something like e-commerce but it's just a review website that user makes comment about brands, products and posts of brands. So, i have a polymorphic table for comments.
When somebody tries to add comment, first, i need to define the comment type like Brand, Product or Post. In this case, i'm using switch case to know what user's want to do. I think there would be better way to do that with clean code structure that's why i'm here.
I just want know if this is the proper way to add comment like below.
public function addComment(Request $request, $type, $id, $tab = null)
{
// Error messages
$messages = [
'add_comment.required' => '...',
'add_comment.min' => '...',
'add_comment.max' => '...',
'rating.numeric' => '...',
'rating.min' => '...',
'rating.max' => '...'
];
// Validate the form data
$validator = Validator::make($request->all(), [
'add_comment' => 'required|min:5|max:2000',
'rating' => 'numeric|min:0|max:5'
], $messages);
if($validator->fails())
{
return back()->withErrors($validator);
} else {
$comment = new Comment;
$comment->body = $request->get('add_comment');
$comment->user()->associate(Auth::user()->id);
$comment->star_value = $request->get('rating');
switch ($type) {
case 'Post':
$post = Post::findOrFail($id);
$comment->star_value = NULL;
$post->comments()->save($comment);
break;
case 'Product':
$product = Product::findOrFail($id);
$product->comments()->save($comment);
//Update rating of product
$average = $product->comments()->getAvg();
$product->rating = $average;
$product->save();
break;
default:
$this->postCommentToBrand($comment, $id, $tab);
break;
}
return redirect()->back();
}
}
$request = inputs
$type = commentable_type (Brand, Product, Post)
$id = id of $type
$tab = This is actually for brand. Because brand has customer support and technical support. Need to define it there by using switch case as well.

Answer 1

Split it into separate routes - one for each commentable type, for example:
Route::post('add-comment/post/{post}', 'CommentsController#addPostComment');
Route::post('add-comment/product/{product}', 'CommentsController#addProductComment');
Route::post('add-comment/brand/{brand}/{tab}', 'CommentsController#addBrandComment');
This will take care of your switch - now Laravel's router will see right away what type of commentable entity you are adding comment to. Router will also utilise implicit model binding and will find those models by specified id for you (and return 404 if said row doesn't exist in your DB) so we get rid of those pesky findOrFail calls as well.
Now in your controller you should utilize form requests for validation (instead of creating Validator instance manually). Finally we can group logic of creating new Comment instance (that is common for all commentable types) into separate method. Then your controller will look like this:
protected function getNewCommentFromRequest(Request $request)
{
$comment = new Comment;
$comment->body = $request->get('add_comment');
$comment->user()->associate(Auth::user()->id);
$comment->star_value = $request->get('rating');
return $comment;
}
public function addPostComment(AddCommentRequest $request, Post $post)
{
$comment = $this->getNewCommentFromRequest($request);
$comment->star_value = NULL;
$post->comments()->save($comment);
return redirect()->back();
}
...
Methods addProductComment and addBrandComment won't be much different.