Resource Requests

Resource requests are used by Resource Manager to perform various operations on your resources, such as:

• Filter records;
• Sort records;
• Load relationships;
• Paginate records.

Why not use Request instead?

While resource request is basically a wrapper around Laravel's Illuminate\Http\Request class, it provides a more structured way to work with resource-related data.

For example, it allows you to override request field names that are used to retrieve filter values, sorting field & direction, and list of relationships to load.

Also, you can create custom resource request and use it in places where there's no HTTP request available (for example, console commands or background jobs).

Creating a resource request

Laniakea provides default resource request class that you can use right away. The only requirement is a Laniakea\Resources\Middleware\SetResourceRequest middleware that should be attached to all your routes that will be using Resource Manager.

Of course, you can skip this middleware and create your own implementation of Laniakea\Resources\Interfaces\ResourceRequestInterface and use it instead.

Using default resource request

To use default resource request, simply inject the Laniakea\Resources\Interfaces\ResourceRequestInterface interface into your controller method. If the SetResourceRequest middleware was attached to the route, your controller method will receive instance of Laniakea\Resources\Requests\ResourceRequest class.

Now you can either use this request instance directly, or pass it to the Resource Manager's methods.

Retrieve list of inclusions

In some cases you might need to know what inclusions were requested by the client. For example, if you're using Fractal Transformers, you'll need list of inclusions for parseIncludes method.

You can retrieve them using the getInclusions() method of the resource request instance (example below uses Spatie's spatie/laravel-fractal package):

<?php

declare(strict_types=1);

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use App\Models\Book;
use App\Repositories\BooksRepository;
use App\Resources\BooksResource;
use App\Transformers\Books\BookTransformer;
use Illuminate\Http\JsonResponse;
use Laniakea\Resources\Interfaces\ResourceManagerInterface;
use Laniakea\Resources\Interfaces\ResourceRequestInterface;

class BooksApiController
{
    public function index(
        ResourceRequestInterface $request, 
        ResourceManagerInterface $manager,
    ): JsonResponse {
        $paginator = $manager->getPaginator(
            $request,
            new BooksResource(),
            new BooksRepository(),
        );

        return fractal($paginator, new BookTransformer())
            // Make sure to pass list of inclusions to the fractal transformer.
            ->parseIncludes($request->getInclusions())
            ->respond();
    }

    public function show(
        ResourceRequestInterface $request,
        Book $book,
    ): JsonResponse {
        return fractal($book, new BookTransformer())
            // Make sure to pass list of inclusions to the fractal transformer.
            ->parseIncludes($request->getInclusions())
            ->respond();
    }
}