Better Http Status Codes In Laravel

1 year ago Sun, Jan 2, 2022
tips laravel php testing

'Magic numbers' like 200 or 401 can cause a lot of confusion for colleagues or your future self. It's not always immediately obvious what these numbers represent.

A magic number is a number in the code that has no context or meaning.

Luckily, when it comes to HTTP Status Codes, we can make use of a complete set of constants that will make the meaning of your code self evident.

return Response::HTTP_OK;

For example, Response::HTTP_OK will return 200, Response::HTTP_UNAUTHORIZED will return 401 and my personal favourite Response::HTTP_I_AM_A_TEAPOT will return 418.

This is possible because the Illuminate\Http\Response class extends the Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response class.

Finally, we also have access to an array of all status codes via Response::$statusTexts. This is handy if you want to list, validate or otherwise iterate over all status codes.

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