Passing data to the controller directly from route file

Hello, I'm working on such a simple e-commerce now. It is a classic e-shop with few categories. The idea is that I want to have a subpage for each category, right at the root of the url.

like this:

Route::get('/category-one', ...);
Route::get('/category-two', ...);
Route::get('/category-three', ...);

I am currently solving this by having an invokable controller for every single category. Of course, I don't like this solution very much. Because their logic is exactly the same, with the difference that I get a different category from the database.

So I want to create a universal controller, such as CategoryProductController. This solution seems great, but I can't do just:

Route::get('/{category:slug}', ...)

Because I will overwrite every root route. And I also loose ability to separetelly named this routes (which I would like to keep )

So my idea now is to pass data to controller directly from route file. Let me explain:

// CategoryProductController

public function index ($category_id)
{
	$category = Category::findOrFail($category_id);

	return view('category_view', [
		'products' => $category->products()
	]);
}

But I don't wanna pass the "$category_id", to url. Because I don't want to dirty my url :D

I will like to pass it directly from the route file:

Route::get('/category-one', [CategoryProductController::class, 'index', 1])
->name('category-one');

Route::get('/category-two', [CategoryProductController::class, 'index', 2])
->name('category-two');

Route::get('/category-three', [CategoryProductController::class, 'index', 3])
->name('category-three');

Is something like this possible? I will also be happy for any advice that may even tell me that I approach it completely badly.

Thank you....

martinbean

5 years ago

Best Answer

Level 80

@marosmjartan Yes, you’re going about this the wrong way.

Place your category route last and then it won’t overwrite any other “root” routes.

// All of your other routes...

// Your category route, last
Route::get('{category:slug}', [CategoryController::class, 'show'])->name('category.show');

class CategoryController extends Controller
{
    public function show(Category $category)
    {
        return view('category.show', [
            'products' => $category->products(),
        ]);
    }
}

I don’t know how you’re planning to have routes with set names when they’re coming from the database, either… Just route properly using a generic route name and the category slug:

@foreach($categories as $category)
    <li>
        <a href="{{ route('category.show', compact('category')) }}">
            {{ $category->name }}
        </a>
    </li>
@endforeach

marosmjartan

5 years ago

Level 2

Since I get no answer for about a hour I solved it just like you. Thank you anyway.. :)

marosmjartan

5 years ago

Level 2

But still... If I want more than 1 controller to work like this. This would not be the solution...

So the only way to pass value to the controller is via url, yes?

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