Creating First CRUD

We will start our course from creating Laravel API for two Models: Categories and Transactions. In the following sections, we will start creating a React Native mobile application which would use this API.

This is how our mobile app screen will look like, after consuming API for Categories:

Next, we build a Laravel project for the API.

Notice: The Laravel part is identical to the API we created in earlier Laravel API + Flutter course, we will even re-use the same GitHub repository. So if you are coming from there and have the API created, you can skip to the next section with React Native lessons.

Creating a new Laravel Project

Let's start by creating a new Laravel project. Open your terminal and run the following command:

laravel new laravel-api-flutter-api-code

Notice: again, you see the word "flutter" here but this is because we're re-using the same Laravel API lessons from Flutter + Laravel course.

Then we will select None as our Starter kit:

Creating our First Model and Migration

Let's create our first model and migration for our categories. Run the following command:

php artisan make:model Category -m

Then we fill in our fields:

Migration

Schema::create('categories', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->id();
    $table->foreignId('user_id')->nullable()->constrained();
    $table->string('name');
    $table->timestamps();
});

Then, we prepare our model:

app/Models/Category.php

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Factories\HasFactory;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Relations\BelongsTo;
 
class Category extends Model
{
    use HasFactory;
 
    protected $fillable = [
        'user_id',
        'name',
    ];
 
    public function user(): BelongsTo
    {
        return $this->belongsTo(User::class);
    }
}

Creating a Controller

Let's create our API Resource Controller for our categories. Run the following command:

php artisan make:controller Api/CategoryController --resource --api --model=Category

This will create a new controller with all the necessary methods for our CRUD:

app/Http/Controllers/Api/CategoryController.php

use App\Http\Controllers\Controller;
use App\Models\Category;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
 
class CategoryController extends Controller
{
    /**
     * Display a listing of the resource.
     */
    public function index()
    {
        //
    }
 
    /**
     * Store a newly created resource in storage.
     */
    public function store(Request $request)
    {
        //
    }
 
    /**
     * Display the specified resource.
     */
    public function show(Category $category)
    {
        //
    }
 
    /**
     * Update the specified resource in storage.
     */
    public function update(Request $request, Category $category)
    {
        //
    }
 
    /**
     * Remove the specified resource from storage.
     */
    public function destroy(Category $category)
    {
        //
    }
}

Returning First API Response

To keep this simple, we will add the...