How to make instant redirection in Laravel

Question

I want to make an instant redirection in my controller in Laravel.

I know I can use

public function show($page) 
{   
   return Redirect::url(\'http://ex         


        

Answer 1

You have to return the results of the method in the base controller.

return $this->checkPages($page, $totalPages, 'http://example.com');

Answer 2

After a while of digging it seems that for this purposes you should use send() method from Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation (Laravel RedirectResponse inherits from this class).

So you can modify checkPages method this way:

public function checkPages($page, $totalPages, $url) 
{
  if ($page < 2 or $page > $totalPages)  {
     Redirect::url($url)->send();
  }    
}

and it will make instant redirection.

Answer 3

I'd probably suggest that your checkPages method is trying to do too much. Would I expect checkPages (which maybe should be validatePageNumber() or similar) to return a redirect? No, I'd expect it to return true or false.

That gives you this as your logic:

/**
 * Make sure the current page is between 1 and $lastPage
 *
 * @param int $page
 * @param int $lastPage
 * @return bool
 */
protected function validatePageNumber( $page, $lastPage ) {
    return $page < 2 || $page > $lastPage;
}

and now your controller logic is trivial:

public function show( $page ) {
    $totalPages = 100;
    if ( ! $this->validatePageNumber( $page, $totalPages ) ) {
        return Redirect::url( 'http://example.com' );
    }   

    // rest of code here - should be run if condition is false   
}

---

Now if we use quasi-English to read your code, you have a public method show($page) which shows a page: it sets the total number of pages, checks that $page is valid, and if not, redirects somewhere. All of this is control logic, and only control logic, which is what a controller should be doing.

Your validatePageNumber() can now be abstracted into a model, or better yet, a ServiceProvider, and it does one job: validates that a number is between 1 and n.