Laravel routes.php getting big

Question

As you continually add more and more routes to Routes.php it gets bigger and bigger. How do you organize them?

Answer 1

I created a directory /application/routes/ and added files in there. Each file is just a set of routes. Then in routes.php I added the following code to include them all:

// Dynamically include all files in the routes directory
foreach (new DirectoryIterator(__DIR__.DS.'routes') as $file)
{
    if (!$file->isDot() && !$file->isDir() && $file->getFilename() != '.gitignore')
    {
        require_once __DIR__.DS.'routes'.DS.$file->getFilename();
    }
}

Answer 2

even after adopting all the best practices as mentioned in the other answers, Ie: using resource controller, route groups etc.

You can simple 'include' the route files the old fashion way. as mentioned by Chris G in this comment.

you can create simple directory structure and include the route files in the route.php file.

../myroutes
 --route-type-1.php
 --route-type-2.php 

In route.php file

include('myroutes/route-type-1.php');

There is nothing wrong in it. This is how routes are included in the packages.

http://laravel.com/docs/packages#package-routing

Answer 3

I usually use Group routes (because controllers tend to have the same type of filtering needed if they are related) to organize them or if you wish to/can have a smaller routes file you might want to register your controllers and do the extra validation checks of the URL's parameters inside the controller itself.

Answer 4

Actually routs should stay slim. Just move your code to controllers and use the routs to register and redirect to them. The convention is to store one controller per file so your code becomes automatically organized.

Take a look at this

//  application/controllers/sample.php
class Sample_Controller extends Base_Controller
{
    public function action_index()
    {
        echo "Wellcome to the root" //www.testapp.com/sample
    }

    public function action_edit()
    {
        echo "Some editing functions here." //www.testapp.com/sample/edit
    }

     public function action_whatsoever()
    {
        echo "Put here whatever you like." //www.testapp.com/sample/whatsoever
    }

}

The controller-action route can be registered like this:

//application/routs.php
Route::controller('admin::home');

Very straight forward and comfortable.

Update:

You can also register all your controllers with this line for the whole application automatically:

Route::controller(Controller::detect());

Or the controller with all actions:

Route::controller(Controller::detect('yourcontroller'));

Answer 5

Alternatively you could just store the routes in a different files and then get those files using include:

Route::group(stuff,function(){
  include __DIR__.DS.'routes1.php';
  include __DIR__.DS.'routes2.php';
});

That gives a nice and clean way to sort handle when there's way too much code, also you could just mention

Route::controller(Controller::detect());

And then structure your controllers accordingly:

class Account_Controller extends Base_Controller {
  public function action_login() {
      //Login
  }

  public function action_logout() {
      ...
  }

If you have to passin parameters to some function:

  public function dosomething($input){
     ...
  }

You can reach those functions like this:

  http://yourapp/account/login
  http://yourapp/account/logout

Then you could just call the function by appending the parameters to the URL,

  http://yourapp.account/dosomething/somedata

If you need some methods to be protected then append them without the action_ so that they can't be accessed by the public.

Alternatively, you could switch to restful methods which is basically a way to respond to some input based on the type of query you get, for instance when you receive a "GET" request to the login page that means that the user needs to see the login screen, when you receive a "POST"request that would usually mean that the user is posting login data and accordingly you can respond which will help you cut down on the number of functions for more information on restful methods you can read this brilliant article by Ryan Tomayako at http://tomayko.com/writings/rest-to-my-wife

To use restful methods you need to mention restful to true and then append the action keyword before the function's name.

public $restful = true;
public function get_login() {
 return View::make('login');
 //This function is accessible using GET request to http://yourapp/login
}

public function post_login() {
   $data = Input::get();
   //do something using the Input data
   //This function is accessible using a POST request to http://yourapp/login
}

This way you can eliminate the need for another route to process and verify the users credentials!

and if you don't want certain methods to be accessed using restful methods then just don't include the action keyword, (get,post,...) in the function name.

Combining restful methods with smart routing is the most efficient way to keep your code clean and safe.