routing.md

HTTP Routing

• Basic Routing
• Route Parameters
• Named Routes
• Route Groups
• Route Prefixing
• CSRF Protection
• Method Spoofing
• Throwing 404 Errors

Basic Routing

You will define most of the routes for your application in the app/Http/routes.php file, which is loaded by the bootstrap/app.php file. Like Laravel, the most basic Lumen routes simply accept a URI and a Closure:

Basic GET Route

$app->get('/', function() {
	return 'Hello World';
});

Other Basic Routes

$app->post('foo/bar', function() {
	return 'Hello World';
});

$app->patch('foo/bar', function() {
	//
});

$app->put('foo/bar', function() {
	//
});

$app->delete('foo/bar', function() {
	//
});

Often, you will need to generate URLs to your routes, you may do so using the url helper:

$url = url('foo');

Routing Requests To Controllers

If you are interested in routing requests to classes, check out the documentation on controllers.

Route Parameters

Of course, you can capture segments of the request URI within your route:

Basic Route Parameter

$app->get('user/{id}', function($id) {
	return 'User '.$id;
});

Regular Expression Parameter Constraints

Note: This is the only portion of Lumen that is not directly portable to the full Laravel framework. If you choose to upgrade your Lumen application to Laravel, your regular expression constraints must be moved to a where method call on the route.

$app->get('user/{name:[A-Za-z]+}', function($name) {
	//
});

Named Routes

Named routes allow you to conveniently generate URLs or redirects for a specific route. You may specify a name for a route with the as array key:

$app->get('user/profile', ['as' => 'profile', function() {
	//
}]);

You may also specify route names for controller actions:

$app->get('user/profile', [
	'as' => 'profile', 'uses' => 'App\Http\Controllers\UserController@showProfile'
]);

Now, you may use the route's name when generating URLs or redirects:

$url = route('profile');

$redirect = redirect()->route('profile');

Route Groups

Sometimes you may need to apply middleware to a group of routes. Instead of specifying the middleware on each route, you may use a route group.

Shared attributes are specified in an array format as the first parameter to the $app->group() method.

Middleware

Middleware is applied to all routes within the group by defining the list of middleware with the middleware parameter on the group attribute array. Middleware will be executed in the order you define this array:

$app->group(['middleware' => 'foo|bar'], function($app)
{
	$app->get('/', function() {
		// Uses Foo & Bar Middleware
	});

	$app->get('user/profile', function() {
		// Uses Foo & Bar Middleware
	});
});

Namespaces

You may use the namespace parameter in your group attribute array to specify the namespace for all controllers within the group:

$app->group(['namespace' => 'App\Http\Controllers\Admin'], function($app) {
	// Controllers Within The "App\Http\Controllers\Admin" Namespace
});

Route Prefixing

A group of routes may be prefixed by using the prefix option in the attributes array of a group:

$app->group(['prefix' => 'admin'], function($app)
{
	$app->get('users', function()
	{
		// Matches The "/admin/users" URL
	});
});

You can also utilize the prefix parameter to pass common parameters to your routes:

URL Parameter In Prefix

$app->group(['prefix' => 'accounts/{account_id}'], function($app)
{
	$app->get('detail', function($account_id)
	{
		//
	});
});

CSRF Protection

Note: You must enable sessions to utilize this feature of Lumen.

Lumen, like Laravel, makes it easy to protect your application from cross-site request forgeries. Cross-site request forgeries are a type of malicious exploit whereby unauthorized commands are performed on behalf of the authenticated user.

Lumen automatically generates a CSRF "token" for each active user session managed by the application. This token is used to verify that the authenticated user is the one actually making the requests to the application.

Insert The CSRF Token Into A Form

<input type="hidden" name="_token" value="<?php echo csrf_token(); ?>">

Of course, using the Blade templating engine:

<input type="hidden" name="_token" value="{{ csrf_token() }}">

You do not need to manually verify the CSRF token on POST, PUT, or DELETE requests. If it is enabled in the bootstrap/app.php file, the Laravel\Lumen\Http\Middleware\VerifyCsrfToken HTTP middleware will verify that the token in the request input matches the token stored in the session.

X-CSRF-TOKEN

In addition to looking for the CSRF token as a "POST" parameter, the middleware will also check for the X-CSRF-TOKEN request header. You could, for example, store the token in a "meta" tag and instruct jQuery to add it to all request headers:

<meta name="csrf-token" content="{{ csrf_token() }}" />

$.ajaxSetup({
	headers: {
		'X-CSRF-TOKEN': $('meta[name="csrf-token"]').attr('content')
	}
});

Now all AJAX requests will automatically include the CSRF token:

$.ajax({
   url: "/foo/bar",
})

X-XSRF-TOKEN

Lumen also stores the CSRF token in a XSRF-TOKEN cookie. You can use the cookie value to set the X-XSRF-TOKEN request header. Some Javascript frameworks, like Angular, do this automatically for you.

Note: The difference between the X-CSRF-TOKEN and X-XSRF-TOKEN is that the first uses a plain text value and the latter uses an encrypted value, because cookies in Lumen are always encrypted when the global middleware in the bootstrap/app.php file are enabled.

Method Spoofing

HTML forms do not support PUT, PATCH or DELETE actions. So, when defining PUT, PATCH or DELETE routes that are called from an HTML form, you will need to add a hidden _method field to the form.

The value sent with the _method field will be used as the HTTP request method. For example:

<form action="/foo/bar" method="POST">
	<input type="hidden" name="_method" value="PUT">
	<input type="hidden" name="_token" value="{{ csrf_token() }}">
</form>

Throwing 404 Errors

There are two ways to manually trigger a 404 error from a route. First, you may use the abort helper:

abort(404);

The abort helper simply throws a Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Exception\HttpException with the specified status code.

Secondly, you may manually throw an instance of Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Exception\NotFoundHttpException.

More information on handling 404 exceptions and using custom responses for these errors may be found in the errors section of the documentation.