Laravel - Add additional information to route - php

Question

Currently I am working on a project where we are trying to create a RESTful API. This API uses some default classes, for example the ResourceController, for basic behaviour that can be overwritten when needed.
Lets say we have an API resource route:
Route::apiResource('posts', 'ResourceController');
This route will make use of the ResourceController:
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Repositories\ResourceRepository;
class ResourceController extends Controller
{
/**
* The resource class.
*
* #var string
*/
private $resourceClass = '\\App\\Http\\Resources\\ResourceResource';
/**
* The resource model class.
*
* #var string
*/
private $resourceModelClass;
/**
* The repository.
*
* #var \App\Repositories\ResourceRepository
*/
private $repository;
/**
* ResourceController constructor.
*
* #param \Illuminate\Http\Request $request
* #return void
*/
public function __construct(Request $request)
{
$this->resourceModelClass = $this->getResourceModelClass($request);
$this->repository = new ResourceRepository($this->resourceModelClass);
$exploded = explode('\\', $this->resourceModelClass);
$resourceModelClassName = array_last($exploded);
if (!empty($resourceModelClassName)) {
$resourceClass = '\\App\\Http\\Resources\\' . $resourceModelClassName . 'Resource';
if (class_exists($resourceClass)) {
$this->resourceClass = $resourceClass;
}
}
}
...
/**
* Store a newly created resource in storage.
*
* #param \Illuminate\Http\Request $request
* #return \Illuminate\Http\Response
*/
public function store(Request $request)
{
$this->validate($request, $this->getResourceModelRules());
$resource = $this->repository->create($request->all());
$resource = new $this->resourceClass($resource);
return response()->json($resource);
}
/**
* Display the specified resource.
*
* #param int $id
* #return \Illuminate\Http\Response
*/
public function show($id)
{
$resource = $this->repository->show($id);
$resource = new $this->resourceClass($resource);
return response()->json($resource);
}
...
/**
* Get the model class of the specified resource.
*
* #param \Illuminate\Http\Request $request
* #return string
*/
private function getResourceModelClass(Request $request)
{
if (is_null($request->route())) return '';
$uri = $request->route()->uri;
$exploded = explode('/', $uri);
$class = str_singular($exploded[1]);
return '\\App\\Models\\' . ucfirst($class);
}
/**
* Get the model rules of the specified resource.
*
* #param \Illuminate\Http\Request $request
* #return string
*/
private function getResourceModelRules()
{
$rules = [];
if (method_exists($this->resourceModelClass, 'rules')) {
$rules = $this->resourceModelClass::rules();
}
return $rules;
}
}
As you can maybe tell we are not making use of model route binding and we make use of a repository to do our logic.
As you can also see we make use of some dirty logic, getResourceModelClass(), to determine the model class needed to perform logic on/with. This method is not really flexible and puts limits on the directory structure of the application (very nasty).
A solution could be adding some information about the model class when registrating the route. This could look like:
Route::apiResource('posts', 'ResourceController', [
'modelClass' => Post::class
]);
However it looks like this is not possible.
Does anybody have any suggestions on how to make this work or how to make our logic more clean and flexible. Flexibility and easy of use are important factors.

Answer 1

The nicest way would be to refactor the ResourceController into an abstract class and have a separate controller that extends it - for each resource.
I'm pretty sure that there is no way of passing some context information in routes file.
But you could bind different instances of repositories to your controller. This is generally a good practice, but relying on URL to resolve it is very hacky.
You'd have to put all the dependencies in the constructor:
public function __construct(string $modelPath, ResourceRepository $repo // ...)
{
$this->resourceModelClass = $this->modelPath;
$this->repository = $repo;
// ...
}
And do this in a service provider:
use App\Repositories\ResourceRepository;
use App\Http\Controllers\ResourceController;
// ... model imports
// ...
public function boot()
{
if (request()->path() === 'posts') {
$this->app->bind(ResourceRepository::class, function ($app) {
return new ResourceRepository(new Post);
});
$this->app->when(ResourceController::class)
->needs('$modelPath')
->give(Post::class);
} else if (request()->path() === 'somethingelse') {
// ...
}
}
This will give you more flexibility, but again, relying on pure URL paths is hacky.
I just showed an example for binding the model path and binding a Repo instance, but if you go down this road, you'll want to move all the instantiating out of the Controller constructor.

Answer 2

After a lot of searching and diving in the source code of Laravel I found out the getResourceAction method in the ResourceRegistrar handles the option passed to the route.
Further searching led me to this post where someone else already managed to extend this registrar en add some custom functionality.
My custom registrar looks like:
<?php
namespace App\Http\Routing;
use Illuminate\Routing\ResourceRegistrar as IlluResourceRegistrar;
class ResourceRegistrar extends IlluResourceRegistrar
{
/**
* Get the action array for a resource route.
*
* #param string $resource
* #param string $controller
* #param string $method
* #param array $options
* #return array
*/
protected function getResourceAction($resource, $controller, $method, $options)
{
$action = parent::getResourceAction($resource, $controller, $method, $options);
if (isset($options['model'])) {
$action['model'] = $options['model'];
}
return $action;
}
}
Do not forget to bind in the AppServiceProvider:
$registrar = new ResourceRegistrar($this->app['router']);
$this->app->bind('Illuminate\Routing\ResourceRegistrar', function () use ($registrar) {
return $registrar;
});
This custom registrar allows the following:
Route::apiResource('posts', 'ResourceController', [
'model' => Post::class
]);
And finally we are able to get our model class:
$resourceModelClass = $request->route()->getAction('model');
No hacky url parse logic anymore!