Unable to prepare route [widgets] for serialization. Another route has already been assigned name [widgets.index]

I've been trying to remove closures from my routes file so that I can implement route caching. Having completed this, I've now hit the following issue when running "php artisan route:cache":

Now, I assume that this is because I have a widgets.index route in both my web routes and in my API routes. What is the best practice for managing this situation? Can I exclude the API from route caching? Should I rename the API route to api.widgets.index or something? If so, is there an easy way to mass-rename routes? I have a few dozen routes at the moment with more to come.

bobbybouwmann

6 years ago

Level 88

In general, the API routes don't need a name because you probably won't reference them in your controllers as a route. Your controllers only redirect to web routes. API routes always return some JSON response.

If you want to keep the name prefixing the API routes with api is indeed the best solution here.

1 like

Scottly

6 years ago

Best Answer

Level 4

To be clear, I hadn't named either web or API routes yet and I've been using resource routing with the default naming like so:

Route::resource('widgets', 'WidgetController');

and

Route::apiResource('widgets', 'API\WidgetsController');

I've fixed it now by updating my API routes to the following

Route::apiResource('widgets', 'API\WidgetsController', array("as" => "api"));

Routes are now caching successfully.

6 likes

shaiful

4 years ago

Level 1

@Scottly Hi, Thank you this helped to solve my route caching issue. Anyway I know this is old but how did you get to that solution? Is there any documentation about what route options we can use when declaring the apiResource routes?

Thank you.

NicolasMica

6 years ago

Level 42

👋 Hi there !

Nice to hear you solved you issue, please don't forget to mark the thread as solved as it may help other 🙏

It was indeed a naming overlap as Laravel automatically namspaces routes when using the resource and apiResource methods with the following pattern {resourceName}.{controllerAction}. In that specific case it means widgets.index|show|store|update|destroy were defined twice.

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