Need a little help understanding the generated controllers with resource

The $user variable will be dynamically bound to an App\User as long as the route URI contains a {user} variable.

So in your routes/web.php:

Route::get('/users/{user}', 'UsersController@show');`

Your show method:

public function show(User $user)
{
    return $user;
}

Will output JSON of the $user. The route's user key will be an ID of the user unless you change it, so it'll basically work the same way you are expecting, you just don't have to find the user yourself.

So basically:

GET /users/1

Will return the User with an ID of 1.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you need more details.

Note: You will get a 404 response if the user does not exist, by the way.

@JONPEMBY - Ah I see, what if I have {slug} for some elements?

@JOVEICE - That's when you'll need to find the resource yourself. It'll only automatically do it for you if the variable matches the route 'key'.

For example:

public function show(Resource $resource)
{
    return $resource;
}

Route:

Route::get('/resources/{foo}', 'ResourceController@show');

Won't automatically find the resource for you because foo doesn't match the $resource variable name.

However:

Route::get('/resources/{resource}', 'ResourceController@show');

Would match. :)

You can set getRouteKeyName on the model if you want to use a field other than id to resolve models.

https://laravel.com/docs/5.7/routing#implicit-binding

This is great @jonpemby @snapey Thanks!

@JOVEICE - Very welcome, happy to help!

Just a FYI - if you add the -m flag and specify a model, like User, in addition to the -r flag, it will prepopulate those in the method declarations as well.

php artisan make:controller UserController -r -m=User

So instead of

public function show($user)

it will create

public function show(User $user)

for the relevant methods.