When you want to create any APIs for web\/mobile applications or any REST APIs, you must have to convert your response to a JSON object.<\/p>\n
Let’s discuss how we can build API response through the Laravel Eloquent model with the relationship to arrays to JSON.<\/p>\n
We’ve different types of processes in Laravel to make our response for APIs and for the frontend views.<\/p>\n
Those are below:<\/p>\n
1. By default Laravel Eloquent model provide the response in an object, and we need to convert it to the array and which will be passed through a Laravel response to the API as a JSON object.<\/p>\n
For Ex.<\/p>\n
$user = User::with('roles')->first();\r\nreturn response ([\r\n 'success' => true,\r\n 'message' => 'User data with roles',\r\n 'data' = [\r\n 'user' => $user->toArray(),\r\n ]\r\n], 200);\r\n<\/pre>\nThe same way we can get a response like this:<\/p>\n
json_decode(User::with('roles')->get()->toJson(), true);<\/pre>\n2. To pass a static collection in response to the API we can use the below process:
\nEx.<\/p>\n
$collection = collect([\r\n \u2018f_name\u2019 => fake()->firstName(),\r\n \u2018l_name\u2019 => fake()->lastName(),\r\n]);\r\n$collection->toArray();\r\n<\/pre>\n3. After the Laravel 5.5 version release it provides us to convert our data (JSON\/Array) easily as per our requirement. Laravel’s resource classes allow you to expressively and easily transform your models and model collections into JSON\/Array.<\/p>\n
To create a resource class, we need to run the below command:
\nTerminal command: php artisan make: resource UserResource<\/p>\n
Resources extend the Illuminate\\Http\\Resources\\Json\\Resource class. Our UserResource will be like this:<\/p>\n
<?php\r\n \r\nnamespace App\\Http\\Resources;\r\n \r\nuse Illuminate\\Http\\Resources\\Json\\Resource;\r\n \r\nclass UserResource extends Resource\r\n{\r\n \/**\r\n * Transform the resource into an array.\r\n *\r\n * @param \\Illuminate\\Http\\Request\r\n * @return array\r\n *\/\r\n public function toArray($request)\r\n {\r\n return [\r\n 'id' => $this->id,\r\n 'name' => $this->name,\r\n 'email' => $this->email,\r\n 'created_at' => $this->created_at,\r\n 'updated_at' => $this->updated_at,\r\n ];\r\n }\r\n}\r\n<\/pre>\nTo, use this Resource and get the data:<\/p>\n
use App\\User;\r\nuse App\\Http\\Resources\\UserResource;\r\n\r\npublic function index(){\r\n return new UserResource(User::find(1));\r\n}\r\n<\/pre>\nThis will be useful for the single record to convert. To convert our full collection laravel provides us a facility to create a separate collection resource which will extend the Illuminate\\Http\\Resources\\Json\\ResourceCollection class.<\/p>\n
Terminal command:<\/strong> php artisan make: resource User –collection \/ php artisan make:resource UserCollection<\/p>\nThrough the use of UserCollection we can convert our full collection. We can pass other static parameters. Also, it’ll be like this:<\/p>\n
<?php\r\n \r\nnamespace App\\Http\\Resources;\r\n \r\nuse Illuminate\\Http\\Request;\r\nuse Illuminate\\Http\\Resources\\Json\\ResourceCollection;\r\n \r\nclass UserCollection extends ResourceCollection\r\n{\r\n \/**\r\n * Transform the resource collection into an array.\r\n *\r\n * @return array<int|string, mixed>\r\n *\/\r\n public function toArray(Request $request): array\r\n {\r\n return [\r\n 'data' => $this->collection,\r\n 'links' => [\r\n 'self' => 'link-value',\r\n ],\r\n ];\r\n }\r\n}\r\n<\/pre>\nTo, use this Resource and get the data:<\/p>\n
use App\\Http\\Resources\\UserCollection;\r\nuse App\\Models\\User;\r\n\r\npublic function index(){\r\n return new UserCollection(User::all());\r\n}\r\n<\/pre>\nWe can customise our UserResource as per our requirement to get a response as a JSON or Array. Use this type of Resource we don’t want to convert our record, It’ll be automatically converted. The benefits of using resources are:<\/p>\n
\n- We can use nested Resources\/Collections<\/li>\n
- Convert relationship data into the Resource<\/li>\n
- To Getting data conditionally can be done easily<\/li>\n
- Pass our custom attributes with conditionally<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
So, you can convert your data as per your requirement with the use or ->toArray()\/->toJson() and with the resource. But, the preferred way is to use Resource\/Collection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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