🚀 A super simple package allowing for consistent API responses throughout your Laravel application

Laravel API Response Helpers

A simple package allowing for consistent API responses throughout your Laravel application.

Requirements

• PHP ^7.4 | ^8.0
• Laravel 6, 7 and 8

Installation / Usage

composer require f9webltd/laravel-api-response-helpers

Simply reference the required trait in your controller:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Api\Controllers;

use F9Web\ApiResponseHelpers;
use Illuminate\Http\JsonResponse;

class OrdersController
{
    use ApiResponseHelpers;

    public function index(): JsonResponse
    {
        return $this->respondWithSuccess();
    }
}

Optionally, the trait could be imported within a base controller.

Available methods

respondNotFound(string|Exception $message, ?string $key = 'error')

Returns a 404 HTTP status code, an excpetion object can optionally be passed.

respondWithSuccess(?array $contents = [])

Returns a 200 HTTP status code

respondOk(string $message)

Returns a 200 HTTP status code

respondUnAuthenticated(?string $message = null)

Returns a 401 HTTP status code

respondForbidden(?string $message = null)

Returns a 403 HTTP status code

respondError(?string $message = null)

Returns a 400 HTTP status code

respondCreated(?array $data = [])

Returns a 201 HTTP status code, with response optional data

respondNoContent(?array $data = [])

Returns a 204 HTTP status code, with optional response data. Strictly speaking, the response body should be empty. However, functionality to optionally return data was added to handle legacy projects. Within your own projects, you can simply call the method, omitting parameters, to generate a correct 204 response i.e. return $this->respondNoContent()

Motivation

Ensure consistent JSON API responses throughout an application. The motivation was primarily based on a very old inherited Laravel project. The project contained a plethora of methods/structures used to return an error:

• response()->json(['error' => $error], 400)
• response()->json(['data' => ['error' => $error], 400)
• response()->json(['message' => $error], Response::HTTP_BAD_REQUEST)
• response()->json([$error], 400)
• etc.

I wanted to add a simple trait that kept this consistent, in this case:

$this->respondError('Ouch')

This package is intended to be used alongside Laravel's API resources and in no way replaces them.

Contribution

Any ideas are welcome. Feel free to submit any issues or pull requests.

Testing

composer test

Security

If you discover any security related issues, please email rob@f9web.co.uk instead of using the issue tracker.

Credits

• Rob Allport for F9 Web Ltd.

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.