Laravel Folio

Introduction

Laravel Folio is a powerful page based router designed to simplify routing in Laravel applications. With Laravel Folio, generating a route becomes as effortless as creating a Blade template within your application's resources/views/pages directory.

For example, to create a page that is accessible at the /greeting URL, just create a greeting.blade.php file in your application's resources/views/pages directory:

<div>
    Hello World
</div>

Installation

To get started, install Folio into your project using the Composer package manager:

composer require laravel/folio

After installing Folio, you may execute the folio:install Artisan command, which will install Folio's service provider into your application. This service provider registers the directory where Folio will search for routes / pages:

php artisan folio:install

Page Paths / URIs

By default, Folio serves pages from your application's resources/views/pages directory, but you may customize these directories in your Folio service provider's boot method.

For example, sometimes it may be convenient to specify multiple Folio paths in the same Laravel application. You may wish to have a separate directory of Folio pages for your application's "admin" area, while using another directory for the rest of your application's pages.

You may accomplish this using the Folio::path and Folio::uri methods. The path method registers a directory that Folio will scan for pages when routing incoming HTTP requests, while the uri method specifies the "base URI" for that directory of pages:

use Laravel\Folio\Folio;

Folio::path(resource_path('views/pages/guest'))->uri('/');

Folio::path(resource_path('views/pages/admin'))
    ->uri('/admin')
    ->middleware([
        '*' => [
            'auth',
            'verified',

            // ...
        ],
    ]);

Subdomain Routing

You may also route to pages based on the incoming request's subdomain. For example, you may wish to route requests from admin.example.com to a different page directory than the rest of your Folio pages. You may accomplish this by invoking the domain method after invoking the Folio::path method:

use Laravel\Folio\Folio;

Folio::domain('admin.example.com')
    ->path(resource_path('views/pages/admin'));

The domain method also allows you to capture parts of the domain or subdomain as parameters. These parameters will be injected into your page template:

use Laravel\Folio\Folio;

Folio::domain('{account}.example.com')
    ->path(resource_path('views/pages/admin'));

Creating Routes

You may create a Folio route by placing a Blade template in any of your Folio mounted directories. By default, Folio mounts the resources/views/pages directory, but you may customize these directories in your Folio service provider's boot method.

Once a Blade template has been placed in a Folio mounted directory, you may immediately access it via your browser. For example, a page placed in pages/schedule.blade.php may be accessed in your browser at http://example.com/schedule.

To quickly view a list of all of your Folio pages / routes, you may invoke the folio:list Artisan command:

php artisan folio:list

Nested Routes

You may create a nested route by creating one or more directories within one of Folio's directories. For instance, to create a page that is accessible via /user/profile, create a profile.blade.php template within the pages/user directory:

php artisan make:folio user/profile

# pages/user/profile.blade.php → /user/profile

Index Routes

Sometimes, you may wish to make a given page the "index" of a directory. By placing an index.blade.php template within a Folio directory, any requests to the root of that directory will be routed to that page:

php artisan make:folio index
# pages/index.blade.php → /

php artisan make:folio users/index
# pages/users/index.blade.php → /users

Route Parameters

Often, you will need to have segments of the incoming request's URL injected into your page so that you can interact with them. For example, you may need to access the "ID" of the user whose profile is being displayed. To accomplish this, you may encapsulate a segment of the page's filename in square brackets:

php artisan make:folio "users/[id]"

# pages/users/[id].blade.php → /users/1

Captured segments can be accessed as variables within your Blade template:

<div>
    User {{ $id }}
</div>

To capture multiple segments, you can prefix the encapsulated segment with three dots ...:

php artisan make:folio "users/[...ids]"

# pages/users/[...ids].blade.php → /users/1/2/3

When capturing multiple segments, the captured segments will be injected into the page as an array:

<ul>
    @foreach ($ids as $id)
        <li>User {{ $id }}</li>
    @endforeach
</ul>

Route Model Binding

If a wildcard segment of your page template's filename corresponds one of your application's Eloquent models, Folio will automatically take advantage of Laravel's route model binding capabilities and attempt to inject the resolved model instance into your page:

php artisan make:folio "users/[User]"

# pages/users/[User].blade.php → /users/1

Captured models can be accessed as variables within your Blade template. The model's variable name will be converted to "camel case":

<div>
    User {{ $user->id }}
</div>

Customizing the Key

Sometimes you may wish to resolve bound Eloquent models using a column other than id. To do so, you may specify the column in the page's filename. For example, a page with the filename [Post:slug].blade.php will attempt to resolve the bound model via the slug column instead of the id column.

On Windows, you should use - to separate the model name from the key: [Post-slug].blade.php.

Model Location

By default, Folio will search for your model within your application's app/Models directory. However, if needed, you may specify the fully-qualified model class name in your template's filename:

php artisan make:folio "users/[.App.Models.User]"

# pages/users/[.App.Models.User].blade.php → /users/1

Soft Deleted Models

By default, models that have been soft deleted are not retrieved when resolving implicit model bindings. However, if you wish, you can instruct Folio to retrieve soft deleted models by invoking the withTrashed function within the page's template:

<?php

use function Laravel\Folio\{withTrashed};

withTrashed();

?>

<div>
    User {{ $user->id }}
</div>

Render Hooks

By default, Folio will return the content of the page's Blade template as the response to the incoming request. However, you may customize the response by invoking the render function within the page's template.

The render function accepts a closure which will receive the View instance being rendered by Folio, allowing you to add additional data to the view or customize the entire response. In addition to receiving the View instance, any additional route parameters or model bindings will also be provided to the render closure:

<?php

use App\Models\Post;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Auth;
use Illuminate\View\View;

use function Laravel\Folio\render;

render(function (View $view, Post $post) {
    if (! Auth::user()->can('view', $post)) {
        return response('Unauthorized', 403);
    }

    return $view->with('photos', $post->author->photos);
}); ?>

<div>
    {{ $post->content }}
</div>

<div>
    This author has also taken {{ count($photos) }} photos.
</div>

Named Routes

You may specify a name for a given page's route using the name function:

<?php

use function Laravel\Folio\name;

name('users.index');

Just like Laravel's named routes, you may use the route function to generate URLs to Folio pages that have been assigned a name:

<a href="{{ route('users.index') }}">
    All Users
</a>

If the page has parameters, you may simply pass their values to the route function:

route('users.show', ['user' => $user]);

Middleware

You can apply middleware to a specific page by invoking the middleware function within the page's template:

<?php

use function Laravel\Folio\{middleware};

middleware(['auth', 'verified']);

?>

<div>
    Dashboard
</div>

Or, to assign middleware to a group of pages, you may chain the middleware method after invoking the Folio::path method.

To specify which pages the middleware should be applied to, the array of middleware may be keyed using the corresponding URL patterns of the pages they should be applied to. The * character may be utilized as a wildcard character:

use Laravel\Folio\Folio;

Folio::path(resource_path('views/pages'))->middleware([
    'admin/*' => [
        'auth',
        'verified',

        // ...
    ],
]);

You may include closures in the array of middleware to define inline, anonymous middleware:

use Closure;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Laravel\Folio\Folio;

Folio::path(resource_path('views/pages'))->middleware([
    'admin/*' => [
        'auth',
        'verified',

        function (Request $request, Closure $next) {
            // ...

            return $next($request);
        },
    ],
]);

Route Caching

When using Folio, you should always take advantage of Laravel's route caching capabilities. Folio listens for the route:cache Artisan command to ensure that Folio page definitions and route names are properly cached for maximum performance.