How to Create Response Macros in Laravel?

Introduction

Response macros allow you to create a custom response which you could later on re-use in different routes and controllers.

This is quite beneficial in order to reduce code duplication.

You could actually built macros for other Laravel components as well, but in this tutorial, you will learn how to create a route macro for your Laravel application!

Prerequisites

Before you start, you would need to have a Laravel application up and running.

I will be using a DigitalOcean Ubuntu Droplet for this demo. If you wish, you can use my affiliate code to get free $100 DigitalOcean credit to spin up your own servers!

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Creating a service provider

You could add your macro directly in the app/Providers/AppServiceProvider.php file under the boot method, but let's take this a step further and create our own service provider instead.

In order to create our service provider run the following command:

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php artisan make:provider ResponseMacroServiceProvider

You will get the following output after running the command:

Provider created successfully.

This will generate a new file at:

app/Providers/ResponseMacroServiceProvider.php

After that, in order to register this new service provider open the config/app.php file and at the end of the providers array add the following:

    App\Providers\ResponseMacroServiceProvider::class,

With that in place we can move to the next step where we will create our response macro!

Creating the Response Macro

Once we have the service provide in place it's time to build our response macro.

With your favorite text editor open the app/Providers/ResponseMacroServiceProvider.php file and first include the Response facade:

<?php

namespace App\Providers;

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Response;

use Illuminate\Support\ServiceProvider;

To keep things simple, our macro will expect a string as the input, then it will base64 encode it and return the encoded string.

To do that, in the boot() method we will define our macro:

    public function boot()
    {
        Response::macro('bEncode', function ($value) {
            return Response::make(base64_encode($value));
        });
    }

The new macro is called bEncode for base64 encode.

Using the Response Macro

Let's quickly test the new macro that we created by adding a simple get route to the routes/web.php file:

Route::get('encode/{string}', function($string){
    return response()->bEncode($string);
});

Now if you were to visit the /encode/some-string-here route, you would get a response with the some-string-here string base64 encoded!

Conclusion

Now you know how to create a macro in your Laravel application and use it in your routes and controllers.

For more information on Laravel macros, make sure to check out the official docs here:

Laravel Response Macros

If you are just getting started with Laravel, make sure to check out this introduction course here:

Getting started with Laravel