HTTP Responses

HTTP Responses

• Creating Responses
  • Attaching Headers To Responses
  • Attaching Cookies To Responses
  • Cookies & Encryption
• Redirects
  • Redirecting To Named Routes
  • Redirecting To Controller Actions
  • Redirecting With Flashed Session Data
• Other Response Types
  • View Responses
  • JSON Responses
  • File Downloads
  • File Responses
• Response Macros

Creating Responses

Strings & Arrays

All routes and controllers should return a response to be sent back to the user's browser. Laravel provides several different ways to return responses. The most basic response is simply returning a string from a route or controller. The framework will automatically convert the string into a full HTTP response:

Route::get('/', function () {
    return 'Hello World';
});

In addition to returning strings from your routes and controllers, you may also return arrays. The framework will automatically convert the array into a JSON response:

Route::get('/', function () {
    return [1, 2, 3];
});

Did you know you can also return Eloquent collections from your routes or controllers? They will automatically be converted to JSON. Give it a shot!

Response Objects

Typically, you won't just be returning simple strings or arrays from your route actions. Instead, you will be returning full Illuminate\Http\Response instances or views.

Returning a full Response instance allows you to customize the response's HTTP status code and headers. A Response instance inherits from the Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response class, which provides a variety of methods for building HTTP responses:

Route::get('home', function () {
    return response('Hello World', 200)
                  ->header('Content-Type', 'text/plain');
});

Attaching Headers To Responses

Keep in mind that most response methods are chainable, allowing for the fluent construction of response instances. For example, you may use the header method to add a series of headers to the response before sending it back to the user:

return response($content)
            ->header('Content-Type', $type)
            ->header('X-Header-One', 'Header Value')
            ->header('X-Header-Two', 'Header Value');

Or, you may use the withHeaders method to specify an array of headers to be added to the response:

return response($content)
            ->withHeaders([
                'Content-Type' => $type,
                'X-Header-One' => 'Header Value',
                'X-Header-Two' => 'Header Value',
            ]);

Attaching Cookies To Responses

The cookie method on response instances allows you to easily attach cookies to the response. For example, you may use the cookie method to generate a cookie and fluently attach it to the response instance like so:

return response($content)
                ->header('Content-Type', $type)
                ->cookie('name', 'value', $minutes);

The cookie method also accepts a few more arguments which are used less frequently. Generally, these arguments have the same purpose and meaning as the arguments that would be given to PHP's native setcookie method:

->cookie($name, $value, $minutes, $path, $domain, $secure, $httpOnly)

Cookies & Encryption

By default, all cookies generated by Laravel are encrypted and signed so that they can't be modified or read by the client. If you would like to disable encryption for a subset of cookies generated by your application, you may use the $except property of the App\Http\Middleware\EncryptCookies middleware, which is located in the app/Http/Middleware directory:

/**
 * The names of the cookies that should not be encrypted.
 *
 * @var array
 */
protected $except = [
    'cookie_name',
];

Redirects

Redirect responses are instances of the Illuminate\Http\RedirectResponse class, and contain the proper headers needed to redirect the user to another URL. There are several ways to generate a RedirectResponse instance. The simplest method is to use the global redirect helper:

Route::get('dashboard', function () {
    return redirect('home/dashboard');
});

Sometimes you may wish to redirect the user to their previous location, such as when a submitted form is invalid. You may do so by using the global back helper function. Since this feature utilizes the session, make sure the route calling the back function is using the web middleware group or has all of the session middleware applied:

Route::post('user/profile', function () {
    // Validate the request...

    return back()->withInput();
});