Laravel 5 make routing with unique parameter - php

Question

I am currently using a route with a parameter nameto query the profile of a user in my application.
So for example: /members/johnwill show the profile of John.
You see the problem here, if there are 2 John's then it's gonna be a problem.
I know I could do something like this /members/idsince id is unique but I want the url to look pretty with the user's name and not a random number.
So my question is if there is a way to use the id to make it unique but to display the name in url?
my route:
Route::get('/members/{name}', 'UserController#usersProfile');
My usersProfile method:
/**
* Returns a users profile.
*
* #param string $name
*
* #return \Illuminate\Http\Response
*/
public function usersProfile($name)
{
$profile = $this->userService->getProfile($name);
if ($profile == null) {
return redirect('members')->with('status', 'Whoops, looks like that member does not exist (yet).');
}
return view('members/profile', ['profile' => $profile]);
}

Answer 1

you can use some package for slug your model name :
https://github.com/spatie/laravel-sluggable
https://github.com/cviebrock/eloquent-sluggable
these packages automatically doing that for you.
if you have same name this will happen:
http://example.com/post/my-dinner-with-andre-francois
http://example.com/post/my-dinner-with-andre-francois-1
http://example.com/post/my-dinner-with-andre-francois-2
just in production i have some issue with scopes...
when you apply global scope on model , it may create duplicate slug for that ... you can fix that by add this to your model :
public function scopeFindSimilarSlugs(Builder $query, Model $model, $attribute, $config, $slug)
{
$separator = $config['separator'];
return $query->withoutGlobalScopes()->where(function (Builder $q) use ($attribute, $slug, $separator) {
$q->where($attribute, '=', $slug)
->orWhere($attribute, 'LIKE', $slug . $separator . '%');
});
}

Answer 2

You should add another column to your user table with name 'slug' or 'username' and map that column in your route.
In your users model, make a static function to generate unique slug with a number attached and save it in that new column to provide users with public/private profile URLs.
This below sample will stop returning slug/username after 100 users with the same name.
public static function getUniqueSlug($name) {
$original_slug = getSlug($name); // Default getter to get value in model
$slug = str_slug($original_slug); //Convert a string into url friendly string with hyphens
while(true) {
$count = User::where('slug', $slug)->count();
if($count > 0) {
$slug = $original_slug."-".rand(1,99);
} else {
return $slug;
}
}
}