// tutorial

Resource controllers with Route::resource

One artisan command and one route line give you a controller with all 7 conventional CRUD methods already stubbed out and wired to the right verbs and URIs. Here's how it fits together, method by method — and the leaner apiResource version for when there's no browser involved.

1. Generate the controller

   The --resource flag stubs out all 7 CRUD methods with empty bodies, instead of the single index() you'd get from a plain controller. Add --model to type-hint the methods against an existing Eloquent model.

   bash Copy

   php artisan make:controller ProductController --resource --model=Product

   That creates app/Http/Controllers/ProductController.php with index, create, store, show, edit, update and destroy already declared.

2. Register the route

   One line in routes/web.php registers all 7 routes at once — the URIs, HTTP verbs and route names all follow REST conventions, so there's nothing left to configure.

   php Copy

   use App\Http\Controllers\ProductController;
   
   Route::resource('products', ProductController::class);

   Confirm what got registered with:

   bash Copy

   php artisan route:list

3. The 7 methods it expects

   Two of the seven — create and edit — only exist to show HTML forms, which is why they drop out of the API version in the next step.

   Verb	URI	Method	Route name
   GET	/products	index	products.index
   GET	/products/create	create	products.create
   POST	/products	store	products.store
   GET	/products/{product}	show	products.show
   GET	/products/{product}/edit	edit	products.edit
   PUT/PATCH	/products/{product}	update	products.update
   DELETE	/products/{product}	destroy	products.destroy

4. Fill in a couple of methods

   Because the controller was generated with --model=Product, the methods that take a {product} URI segment already type-hint Product $product — Laravel resolves it from the route via route model binding, no manual lookup needed.

   php Copy

   public function index()
   {
       return Product::latest()->paginate(20);
   }
   
   public function store(Request $request)
   {
       $product = Product::create($request->validate([
           'name' => 'required|string|max:255',
           'price' => 'required|numeric|min:0',
       ]));
   
       return redirect()->route('products.show', $product);
   }
   
   public function show(Product $product)
   {
       return view('products.show', compact('product'));
   }

5. Building an API instead? Use apiResource

   An API has no HTML forms, so it never needs create or edit. The --api flag generates a controller without those two, and Route::apiResource registers only the remaining 5 routes.

   bash Copy

   php artisan make:controller Api/ProductController --api --model=Product

   php Copy

   use App\Http\Controllers\Api\ProductController;
   
   Route::apiResource('products', ProductController::class);

   That leaves exactly index, store, show, update and destroy — the same verbs and URIs as the table above, minus the two GET routes that used to render forms.