How to change response in Laravel?

Question

I have RESTful service that is available by endpoints.

For example, I request api/main and get JSON data from server.

For response I use:

return response()->json(["categories" => $categories]);

How to control format of response passing parameter in URL?

As sample I need this: api/main?format=json|html that it will work for each response in controllers.

How would you format the response with `HTML`? – Rwd Feb 19 '17 at 10:24 — Rwd, Feb 19 '17 at 10:24
Is there anything you have tried so far? – Rwd Feb 19 '17 at 10:43 — Rwd, Feb 19 '17 at 10:43
I tried code that posted below – Darama Feb 19 '17 at 11:06 — Darama, Feb 19 '17 at 11:06
Have you thought about using Middleware? – Rwd Feb 19 '17 at 11:20 — Rwd, Feb 19 '17 at 11:20
How to use Middleware in this case? – Darama Feb 19 '17 at 13:00 — Darama, Feb 19 '17 at 13:00

Rwd · Answer 1 · 2021-11-30T10:20:16.220

One option would be to use Middleware for this. The below example assumes that you'll always be returning view('...', [/* some data */]) i.e. a view with data.

When the "format" should be json, the below will return the data array passed to the view instead of the compiled view itself. You would then just apply this middleware to the routes that can have json and html returned.

public function handle($request, Closure $next)
{
    $response = $next($request);

    if ($request->input('format') === 'json') {
        $response->setContent(
            $response->getOriginalContent()->getData()
        );
    }

    return $response;
}

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 19 '17 at 15:05

You can use for this Response macros. For example in AppServiceProvider inside boot method you can add:

\Response::macro('custom', function($view, $data) {
    if (\Request::input('format') == 'json') {
            return response()->json($data);
    }
    return view($view, $data);
});

and in your controller you can use now:

$data = [
   'key' => 'value',
];

return response()->custom('your.view', $data);

If you run now for example GET /categories you will get normal HTML page, but if you run GET /categories?format=json you will get Json response. However depending on your needs you might need to customize it much more to handle for example also redirects.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 19 '17 at 10:46

0

With your format query parameter example the controller code would look something like this:

public function main(Request $request)
{
    $data = [
        'categories' => /* ... */
    ];

    if ($request->input('format') === 'json') {
        return response()->json(data);
    }

    return view('main', $data);
}

Alternatively you could simply check if the incoming request is an AJAX call via $request->input('format') === 'json' with $request->ajax()

answered Feb 19 '17 at 10:46

nCrazed

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Problem is that I dont want to write this code in each controller, I need DRY principle. – Darama Feb 19 '17 at 11:02
There's nothing stopping your from extracting the common logic into a helper method . – nCrazed Feb 19 '17 at 11:52
And as Ross suggested, you could return the`$data` array from the controller and let a custom middleware handle conversion to the correct type of response. – nCrazed Feb 19 '17 at 11:56

How to change response in Laravel?

3 Answers3