Laravel Response Macros for APIs

Jad Joubran has a great tutorial about how to use response macros when building an API with Laravel.

Dealing with APIs

Consistency is one of the most important aspects to consider when building an API. You often find yourself returning 2 types of responses; one for success and one for errors.

<?php

class PostsController{
  public function get(){
    try {
      //some code
    }catch (Exception $e){
      //error
      return [
        'errors'  => true,
        'message' => $e->getMessage()
      ];
    }

    $posts = Post::get();

    //success
    return [
      'errors' => false,
      'data'   => compact('posts')
    ];
  }
}

As you can see, we are returning error responses in a specific format, and success responses in a different format. Soon enough you’ll notice that you’re repeating this over and over again.

Using response macros

Response macros allow you to define a macro that can be called on the response() function.

We will create a new ResponseMacroServiceProvider and define a success and error macros inside the boot function:

<?php

class ResponseMacroServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider
{
  public function boot()
  {
    Response::macro('success', function ($data) {
        return Response::json([
          'errors'  => false,
          'data' => $data,
        ]);