Popper way to serve .html files on lumen

Why not just serve the html with View()?

Still learning AngularJS myself, but I guess I would do something like this. (Not tested)

/**
 * Serve angularjs boot html
 */
$app->get('/', function() { return view('index'); });

/**
 * JSON Api
 */
$app->group(['prefix' => 'api'], function($app) {

    /**
     * Users & Profiles
     */
    $app->group(['prefix' => 'user'], function($app) {
        $app->get('/', 'UserController@showUsers');
        $app->get('{name}', 'UserController@showProfile');
        $app->post('{name}/update', 'UserController@updateProfile');
    });
    
    /**
     * Site status
     */
    $app->get('status', function() { /* Return JSON response */});
});

/**
 * Serve views for AngularJS from the "resources/views" folder
 */
$app->get('views/{path:.*}', function($path) {
    if(view()->exists($path)) {
        return view($path);
    }

    if($path === '/') {
        return view('home');
    }

    return view('errors.404');
});

That's not where the views go and the default htaccess file redirects all public requests to the index.php file. You can use the view for any file type not just blade and or php. It just looks for the name before the .

Put your html files where they are expected to go.

http://lumen.laravel.com/docs/views

I ended up with a mixture of PhaxeNor, jekinney and my solution.

1. My frontend app is currently split into a directory structure not using PSR-4 directory structure, and for good reason. Its an angular Single Page app. The idea is to serve it through a reverse proxy ngnx not lumen, so it needs decoupling.
2. the SPA is component based and that conflicts with PSR-4 (which its designed for PHP reusability and this is not PHP), I use folders for reusable components that include all necesary files CC/HTML template/Controllers/Service, and that does not play well with PSR-4.
3. the app will be compiled into a single file containing all CSS/JS/HTML code with the exception of large 3rd party libs like angular.
4. at the moment the app needs to run as separate files for development and live reload. So I need a solution that would allow for single page and multi page and is weakly tied to the lumen server (just for development). 5)if I use 'views/{path:.*}' and redirect all to MainController@index then the Angular router will resolve the routes making the app behave like a multiple page app (copying URL and emailing it) while being a SPA.
5. index can be served from one php file or hml file on resources/views like jekinney says, or bypased to the public folder, it does not matter because 100% calls will be redirected to 1 file. Decoupling and componatization is more important in the frontend for this app.
6. Not every request gets redirected to index.php, like when you share pictures from public, or scripts..

Thanks for the help :)

@jekinney what an eloquent answer.