Help Refactoring Monstrous Code

@uniqueginun I’ve done a lot of refactoring projects in the past! It’s always a good feeling to take a large chunk of code and refactor it into “nice” code.

Without being able to see what you’re working with, my first steps would be to extract all of that logic into another method in the controller, so your controllers looks something like this:

class RegisterationController extends Controller
{
    public function store(Request $request)
    {
        $this->handleRegistration($request);

        // Return response
    }

    protected function handleRegistration(Request $request)
    {
        // All of the logic that used to be in the store method, here instead
    }
}

From here, you can then start splitting the handleRegistration method body into other, smaller methods in the controller as well. So eventually, you should end up with a controller with lots of small, protected methods.

From here, you can look to see if there are any classes you can extrapolate, and move those methods to the objects you’ve identified, which will start to clean up your controller.

The key to refactoring is to do it in small, discreet steps. Try to stick to doing one thing at a time. If you try to refactor everything in one go, you’ll just find yourself going down a rabbit hole, and find yourself running git reset far too often. So move slow, write tests, and then move on to another step when you’ve successfully refactored something with your tests still passing.

@uniqueginun Your code could look likes this

UserRegisterationOperationController.php

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use App\Http\Requests\UserRegisterationOperation\StoreForm;
use Exception;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Log;

class UserRegisterationOperationController extends Controller
{
    public function store(StoreForm $form)
    {
        try {
            [$user, $task, $files] = $form->persist();

            return response(['user' => $user, 'task' => $task, 'files' => $files], 201);
        } catch (Exception $e) {
            Log::error($e->getMessage());

            return response(['error' => $e->getMessage()], 500);
        }
    }
}

And here is StoreForm what is a form request

<?php

namespace App\Http\Requests\UserRegisterationOperation;

use App\Models\User;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Http\FormRequest;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;

class StoreForm extends FormRequest
{
    /**
     * Determine if the user is authorized to make this request.
     *
     * @return bool
     */
    public function authorize()
    {
        return true;
    }

    /**
     * Get the validation rules that apply to the request.
     *
     * @return array
     */
    public function rules()
    {
        return [
            'name' => 'required|string',
            'desc' => 'required|string',

            // etc
        ];
    }

    /**
     * Get custom attributes for validator errors.
     *
     * @return array
     */
    public function attributes()
    {
        return [
            'name' => 'Name',
            'desc' => 'Desciption',

            // etc
        ];
    }

    public function persist()
    {
        return DB::transaction(function () {
            $user = $this->createUser();

            $task = $this->createTask($user);

            $files = $this->createFiles($user);

            return [$user, $task, $files];
        });
    }

    protected function createUser()
    {
        return User::firstOrCreate(
            ['email' => $this->email],
            ['name' => $this->name, 'password' => bcrypt($this->password)]
        );
    }

    protected function createTask($user)
    {
        return $user->tasks()->create([
            'name' => $this->name,
            'desc' => $this->task_desc
        ]);
    }

    protected function createFiles($user)
    {
        $files = collect($this->allFiles())->map(function ($file, $key) {
            return [
                'name' => $key,
                'path' => $file->store('photos')
            ];
        })->values()->toArray();

        $user->uploads()->insert($files);

        return $files;
    }
}

So you have there a validation, which is very important.