[FIXED] How to change response in Laravel?

Issue

I have RESTful service that is available by endpoints.

For example, I request api/main and get JSON data from server.

For response I use:

return response()->json(["categories" => $categories]);

How to control format of response passing parameter in URL?

As sample I need this: api/main?format=json|html that it will work for each response in controllers.

Solution

You can use for this Response macros. For example in AppServiceProvider inside boot method you can add:

\Response::macro('custom', function($view, $data) {
    if (\Request::input('format') == 'json') {
            return response()->json($data);
    }
    return view($view, $data);
});

and in your controller you can use now:

$data = [
   'key' => 'value',
];

return response()->custom('your.view', $data);

If you run now for example GET /categories you will get normal HTML page, but if you run GET /categories?format=json you will get Json response. However depending on your needs you might need to customize it much more to handle for example also redirects.

Answered By - Marcin Nabiałek