Ignore route in Laravel 5.1 - php

Question

I want to create dynamic pages CMS for my Laravel app. Admin is allowed to provide any URI for any page, so for example, he can create page with one/two/three URI and http://example.com/one/two/three will point to this site. I already figured out it's possible to add single route for multiple level URLs like this:
get('{uri}', 'PageController#view')->where('uri', '.+');
Now, I also want to have /{username} URLs to point to users profiles. That means, if I need to make it work together. For me, the perfect code would be something like this:
get('{username}', 'ProfileController#view');
get('{uri}', 'PageController#view')->where('uri', '.+');
Then, in ProfileController I'd like to make my route go further just like it wasn't there. Something like this:
// ProfileController
public function view()
{
$user = User::whereUsername($username)->first();
if ($user === null) {
// Go to the next route.
}
}
Can it be done with Laravel?
I can think of another solution, just to have dynamic routing controller for both usernames and page uris mapping, but I would prefer to have it as separate routes.

Answer 1

You can resolve a new PageController instance out of the Service Container if $user is null.
// ProfileController
public function view()
{
$user = User::whereUsername($username)->first();
if ($user === null) {
// Go to the next route.
$params = []; // If your view method on the PageController has any parameters, define them here
$pageController = app(PageController::class);
return $pageController->callAction('view', $params)
}
}
This way, the {username} route will stay but will show custom content defined by the admin.
Edit:
If you don't want to call a controller manually, you could analyze the current URL segments and check for an existing user before you define your route. In order to not make your routes.php file too complex, I'd add a dedicated service class that analyzes your URL segments:
App\Services\RouteService.php:
<?php
namespace App\Services;
class RouteService {
public static function isUserRoute()
{
if(count(Request::segments()) == 1)
return !! User::whereUsername(Request::segment(1))->first();
}
return false;
}
}
routes.php:
<?php
use App\Services\RouteService;
if(RouteService::isUserRoute())
{
get('{username}', 'ProfileController#view');
}
get('{uri}', 'PageController#view')->where('uri', '.+');
I have not tested this, but it should work. Adjust the RouteService class to your needs.
I'm using the first approach in my CMS and it works realy well. The only difference is that I have written a Job that handles all incoming requests and calls the controller actions respectively.