Check if route exists

I'm not sure if these are the best ways, but I can think of 2 ways right now. The first would be to use route names. I put all my admin routes inside a route group so their route names all are prefixed with 'admin.' so if you do something similar, you can then do something like this:

public function handle($request, Closure $next)
{
    $routeName = Route::currentRouteName();
    
    // isAdminName would be a quick check. For example,
    // you can check if the string starts with 'admin.'
    if ($this->isAdminName($routeName))
    {
        // If so, he's already accessing an admin path,
        // Just send him on his merry way.
        return $next($request);
    }

    // Otherwise, get the admin route name based on the current route name.
    $adminRouteName = 'admin.' . $routeName;

    // If that route exists, redirect him there.
    if (Route::has($adminRouteName))
    {
        return redirect()->route($adminRouteName);
    }

    // Otherwise, redirect him to the admin home page.
    return redirect('/admin');
}

The second method would be to work directly with the route uri.

public function handle($request, Closure $next)
{
    $uri = $request->path();

    // isAdminUri would be a quick check to see
    // if the route starts with 'admin'
    if ($this->isAdminUri($uri))
    {
        // If he's already accessing an admin path,
        // Just send him on his merry way.
        return $next($request);
    }

    // Create a new request for the admin path
    $adminUri = 'admin/' . $uri;
    $adminRequest = $request->create($adminUri);

    // Get route collection
    $routes = Route::getRoutes();

    try {
        // If we find a match, take the user there.
        $routes->match($adminRequest);
        return redirect($adminUri);
    }
    catch (\Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Exception\NotFoundHttpException $e) {
        // Otherwise, we didn't find a match so take the user to the admin page.
        return redirect('/admin');
    }
}

@thomaskim would you give me an example of what $this->isAdminName($routeName) and $this->isAdminUri($uri) would look like?

@mstnorris I was thinking of something simple. For example, since all my route names for the admin panel starts with "admin." (ex: "admin.posts.index", "admin.posts.create"), you could do something like this:

private function isAdminName($routeName)
{
    $adminNamePrefix = 'admin.'; // Change this to match your route name prefix.

    return substr( $routeName, 0, strlen($adminNamePrefix) ) === $adminNamePrefix;
}

Same concept for the uri check. Since all routes start with "admin/posts/create", I know that the uri should start with "admin/".

private function isAdminUri($uri)
{
    $adminUriPrefix = 'admin/'; // Change this to match your uri prefix.

    return substr( $uri, 0, strlen($adminUriPrefix) ) === $adminUriPrefix;
}

@thomaskim sorry, I forgot to ask, should this go in the Admin, User, or other middleware?

For the user is the best choice.

public function isAdminName($routeName)
{
    return strpos($routeName, 'admin_');
}

@thomaskim thank you, that solved it perfectly as far as I can tell. Just what I was looking for. Thanks for adding the other method too, luckily all my routes have very readable names following a convention and the only difference was that the admin routes had a prefix of admin_ so didn't have to modify your code all that much.

@RachidLaasri thanks, I guessed it was better in the User middleware so that's where I put it and it works.

Thank you.