Creating Eloquent API Resource and Finishing CRUD

In this lesson, we will take on two tasks:

1. Implementing Laravel Eloquent API Resource
2. Implementing CRUD operations for the Category model

At the end of this lesson, we will have a fully working CRUD for the Category model with transformed API responses:

Creating First Resource

Let's start by creating our first resource using the artisan command:

php artisan make:resource CategoryResource

This will create a scaffold for our resource:

app/Http/Resources/CategoryResource.php

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Illuminate\Http\Resources\Json\JsonResource;
 
class CategoryResource extends JsonResource
{
    /**
     * Transform the resource into an array.
     *
     * @return array<string, mixed>
     */
    public function toArray(Request $request): array
    {
        return parent::toArray($request);
    }
}

Here, we should focus on the toArray method. This is where we can transform our model data into the desired format. So let's add our transformation logic:

app/Http/Resources/CategoryResource.php

use App\Models\Category;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Illuminate\Http\Resources\Json\JsonResource;
 
 
class CategoryResource extends JsonResource
{
    /**
     * Transform the resource into an array.
     *
     * @return array<string, mixed>
     */
    public function toArray(Request $request): array
    {
        return parent::toArray($request);
        return [
            'id' => $this->id,
            'name' => $this->name,
        ];
    }
}

We have also added a mixing annotation to the class. This will help IDE to understand that this resource is related to the Category model and provide better code completion.

Using Resource in Controller

The last thing we must do is use this resource in our Controller. Let's update our CategoryController:

app/Http/Controllers/CategoryController.php

use App\Http\Resources\CategoryResource;
// ...
 
public function index()
{
    return CategoryResource::collection(Category::all());
}

Now, if we run our Postman request, we should see the transformed response:

If we need to add more fields to the response, we can easily do that by updating the CategoryResource class:

app/Http/Resources/CategoryResource.php

return [
    'id' => $this->id,
    'name' => $this->name,
    'created_at' => $this->created_at,
    'updated_at' => $this->updated_at,
];

Now our response will include created_at and updated_at fields as well:

This is a great way to keep our API responses consistent and clean.

Note: Remember to remove the created_at and updated_at fields, which are an example of how to add more fields to the response.

Another thing you might have noticed is that we have a difference in response structure.

• Without Resource, we get an array like this [{...}, {...}, ...]
• With Resource, we get an array like this {"data": [{...}, {...}, ...]}