Controllers

Controllers

Instead of closures, a route can point at a controller method.

Handler formats

All of these reference HomeController::about():

$router->get('/about', 'HomeController@about');
$router->get('/about', 'HomeController::about');
$router->get('/about', 'HomeController->about');
$router->get('/about', [HomeController::class, 'about']);
$router->get('/about', [HomeController::class => 'about']);

The controller is instantiated when the route is dispatched, and its dependencies are resolved automatically (see Dependency Injection). Route parameters are passed as method arguments:

class PostController
{
    public function show(Request $request, $id)
    {
        return 'Post ' . $id;
    }
}

$router->get('/posts/{id}', 'PostController@show');

Locating controller classes

A fully-qualified class name is used as-is. A short name is resolved against the configured controller namespace, and optionally loaded from a configured directory:

$router = new Router($request, $response, [
    'namespaces' => ['controller' => 'App\\Controllers'],
    'paths'      => ['controller' => __DIR__ . '/app/Controllers'],
]);

// Resolves to App\Controllers\HomeController and, if not autoloaded,
// is required from the configured path.
$router->get('/', 'HomeController@index');

If a controller cannot be located, a RouterException is thrown.

Resource controllers

resource() registers the seven conventional RESTful routes for a controller in one call, each with a generated name:

$router->resource('photos', 'PhotoController');

Method	Path	Controller method	Route name
GET	/photos	index	photos.index
GET	/photos/create	create	photos.create
POST	/photos	store	photos.store
GET	/photos/{photos}	show	photos.show
GET	/photos/{photos}/edit	edit	photos.edit
PUT, PATCH	/photos/{photos}	update	photos.update
DELETE	/photos/{photos}	destroy	photos.destroy

The controller is resolved using the configured controller namespace/path, so 'PhotoController' works with the configuration shown above.

Per-controller middleware

A controller may declare middleware via a public $middlewares property — see Middleware → Controller middlewares.

Next: Named Routes & URLs.