Hi, I would say that the best way to bind Routes, Controllers and Models are "Resources": http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/controllers#restful-resource-controllers

For the question about how could you regroup your 10 controllers into one, I am not an expert, but as far as I used Laravel, you can make whatever you want, you just have to find how..

Ive posted a solution to this a long time ago. It is long so try to search it in the forum.

The point is to have only one controller, and to inject an instance of a model according to the url. /foo/create, inject an instance of foo, /bar/create inject an instance of bar, etc.

Thanks @El_Matella that helps. If I understand you right, you're suggesting one controller and registering resource routes to that controller.

If we do that, how will our app know which dataset in our DB to manipulate? Example: if we choose to register this resource route: Route::resource('drivers', 'appController'); How will it know to use it to create, read, update and delete entries in the 'drivers' table?

@pmall Thanks for replying. Your method makes sense. So, pass variables via the URL and use that controller to do the dirty work. Makes sense to me :)

Hi, the point is, with "resource", Laravel makes the routes for you. The thing is, you are a little less free to name your controller methods.

The other thing is that, the methods provided for those controllers are generally the right ones, I generally don't use other ones, or I just register them with a new route.

EDIT: And then you have a controller per resource:

// ProductsController
public function show($id){
    $product = Product::find($id);
    return view('products.show',compact('product'));
}

// CustomersController
public function show($id){
    $customer = Customer::find($id);
    return view('customers.show',compact('customer'));
}

Hey @pmall (or anyone), sorry to bug you, but if we use your method, and pass 'foo' instance of a model to the controller via the URL, is that dependency injection, method injection, or something else? Is it through binding? I'm having a bugger of a time figuring that out, and can't find anything on here or Google :(

Well, you could do an abstract controller:

abstract class ModelController extends Controller {

    // GET /users/1
    public function show($model_name, $id)
    {
        $model = $this->makeModel($model_name);
        
        $entity = $model->findOrFail($id);

        return view('your-view', compact('entity')); 
    }

    protected makeModel($model_name)
    {
        $model_class = 'App\\'.str_singular($model_name); // App\User;

        return app($model_class);
    }

}

@hdwebpros "Route model binding"

Laravel model binding provides a convenient way to inject class instances into your routes. For example, instead of injecting a user's ID, you can inject the entire User class instance that matches the given ID.

Route Model Binding

P.S.

public function boot(Router $router)
        {
            parent::boot($router);
            $router->model('model1', 'App\model1');
            $router->model('model2', 'App\model2');
            $router->model('model3', 'App\model3');
            $router->model('model4', 'App\model4');
        }
        // Routes.php
        Route::resource('action/model1', 'OnlyOneController')
        Route::resource('action/model2', 'OnlyOneController')
        Route::resource('action/model3', 'OnlyOneController')
        Route::resource('action/model4', 'OnlyOneController')

Then goes the above abstract ModelController class

@luddinus and @mehany both your methods would work. Thank you!

Update. It's working well so far.

Okay, last part to this puzzle. We have our routes and controller setup nicely. The controller gets the model injection via the URL. Seems simple, but how would that controller then send that (model name) to the view? We'd like to put in a heading that this is a section for whatever is in the URL.

Example: url: mydomain.com/trucks

route passes 'trucks' as the model to use to the controller. Controller then should pass 'trucks' to the view somehow.

We'd like the view to have

trucks

. Just not sure what variable I can grab from the controller to get that.

That is where I'm stuck :(

also @mehany how would you get the model that is being bound in the index and create functions?

@mehany this has nothing to do with route model binding.

@hdwebpros You inject an interface representing a model in the constructor of your controller. Then in your app service provider you bind this interface to a concrete model according to the first segment of the url (containing the model "name").

For the views, you can have a subdirectory for each models views, name it like the first segment of the url. Then by using this you can construct the right path for your model's views.

@pmall thank you. You're saying to inject the model interface in the controller instructor like http://laravel.com/docs/5.0/controllers#dependency-injection-and-controllers.

Then bind the interface to a model: http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/container#binding $this->app->bind('App\Contracts\EventPusher', 'App\Services\RedisEventPusher'); But modify that to be according to the first segment of the URL.

Then create views that are named identical with the model names, and from that I can add routes. Am I on the right path?

yes

@pmall That way it would have to implement the injected interface to ALL the models.

@hdwebpros I think you could do something like this

$model = app('App\User');

$var_name = str_plural(class_basename($model)); // users

return view('your-view', [
    $var_name => $model->getAll()
]);

@luddinus what do you mean ?

@pmall As I Understand, you mean this:

// somewhere in your app
App::bind('ResolvedModelFromUrl', function() {

    // some code to get the parameter of the request you need

    return $model; // App\User
    // if App\User does not implements "ResolvedModelFromUrl", it will throw an error.

});


abstract class OnlyOneController extends Controller {

    protected $model;

    public function __construct(ResolvedModelFromUrl $model)
    {
        // ResolvedModelFromUrl is an interface
        // that "returns" one model (via Container), but this model must implement "ResolvedModelFromUrl"

        $this->model = $model;
    }

}

but this model must implement "ResolvedModelFromUrl"

So what's the problem ?

Admittedly I'm not experienced with in depth development within Laravel, but I want to point my dev the right way.

@hdwebpros I don’t mean to be insulting, but why are you wanting to be the one to point your developer the “right way” when you’ve admitted you’re probably not the best person to be doing so?

@pmall Well, no "problem" at all, only remembering that.

hey @pmall, I noticed you mentioned earlier that this has nothing to do with Route Model Binding which I thought it did. Based on your recommendations, what would be the correct answer for this:

if we use your method, and pass 'foo' instance of a model to the controller via the URL, is that dependency injection, method injection, or something else?

I think the OP was following your first advice at the top of the thread which i seem to misunderstood! I am thinking you are referring to this solution:

You inject an interface representing a model in the constructor of your controller. Then in your app service provider you bind this interface to a concrete model according to the first segment of the url (containing the model "name").

Yes I always speak about the same solution here.