Laravel Controller Resource Routes Complete Guide

Introduction

Laravel resource controllers provide a simple way to handle CRUD operations. They automatically generate routes for common actions, making your code cleaner and more maintainable.

Creating Resource Controller

Generate a resource controller:

php artisan make:controller PostController --resource

The generated controller includes:

// app/Http/Controllers/PostController.php
namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use App\Models\Post;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;

class PostController extends Controller
{
    public function index() {}
    public function create() {}
    public function store(Request $request) {}
    public function show(Post $post) {}
    public function edit(Post $post) {}
    public function update(Request $request, Post $post) {}
    public function destroy(Post $post) {}
}

Resource Routes

// routes/web.php
Route::resource('posts', PostController::class);

This creates these routes:

GET       /posts            index   posts.index
GET       /posts/create   create  posts.create
POST      /posts            store   posts.store
GET       /posts/{post}    show    posts.show
GET       /posts/{post}/edit edit   posts.edit
PUT/PATCH /posts/{post}    update  posts.update
DELETE    /posts/{post}    destroy posts.destroy

Partial resources:

Route::resource('posts', PostController::class)->only(['index', 'show']);
Route::resource('posts', PostController::class)->except(['destroy']);

Nested Resources

// Nested resource routes
Route::resource('posts.comments', CommentController::class);

GET       /posts/{post}/comments            index
GET       /posts/{post}/comments/create   create
POST      /posts/{post}/comments            store
GET       /posts/{post}/comments/{comment} show
GET       /posts/{post}/comments/{comment}/edit edit
PUT/PATCH /posts/{post}/comments/{comment} update
DELETE    /posts/{post}/comments/{comment} destroy

Controller handling nested resources:

public function index(Request $request, Post $post)
{
    $comments = $post->comments;
    return view('comments.index', compact('post', 'comments'));
}

API Resources

Use API resources for JSON responses:

php artisan make:resource PostResource

// app/Http/Resources/PostResource.php
namespace App\Http\Resources;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Illuminate\Http\Resources\Json\JsonResource;

class PostResource extends JsonResource
{
    public function toArray(Request $request)
    {
        return [
            'id' => $this->id,
            'title' => $this->title,
            'content' => $this->content,
            'author' => $this->author->name,
            'created_at' => $this->created_at->toISOString(),
        ];
    }
}

public function index()
{
    return PostResource::collection(Post::paginate(10));
}

Summary

Resource controllers and routes in Laravel provide an elegant way to handle CRUD operations. By leveraging nested resources and API resources, you can build clean, RESTful APIs and web applications.

For more information, check out our other tutorials on Route Model Binding and Form Request Validation.