Is there a way to set optional route location parts? - laravel

Question

firstly, I am not sure how to structure the question title correctly, feel free to edit it to represent the question correctly. I will try to explain what I mean.
I implemented localization on my app (URL of tutorial is at bottom of this post), and I have created my route as follows:
// Set language
Route::get('lang/{locale}', 'PagesController#lang');
And it works. But only on pages which have only one "level" in the url:
example.com/first-level - changing language works on these URLs
example.com/first-level/second-level - changing language doesn't work on these pages
At first I thought the problem is with url parameters, cause by chance, the pages where I first noticed changing language didn't work was on a url which has a route with an parameter like this
example.com/first-level/{id}
So then I tried to rewrite the route for changing languages to this (added an optional parameter)
// Set language
Route::get('lang/{optional?}/{locale}', 'PagesController#lang');
But that didn't work either
The language is changed by anchor tags which point to the route
<a href="lang/en">English</
Serbian
Expected result: being able to change the language from whichever page the links are clicked. Clicking the links on pages like example.com/one/two and example.com/one/{id}/two are supposed to work.
Actual results: changing language works only on example.com and pages like example.com/one , and fails on example.com/one/two and example.com/one/{id}/two . When the links are clicked on these pages, the app is sent to an URL like this: example.com/one/lang/en and example.com/one/{id}/lang/en respectively.
I implemented localizations on my project following this tutorial https://appdividend.com/2019/04/01/how-to-create-multilingual-website-using-laravel-localization/#Step_2_Creating_Translation_Files

Answer 1

You can simply define both routes.
Route::get('lang/{locale}', 'PagesController#locale');
Route::get('lang/{optional}/{locale}', 'PagesController#lang');
Then handle the optional variable with your controller methods.
public function locale($locale)
{
return $this->lang(null, $locale);
}
public function lang($optional, $locale)
{
// ... your logic
}
As for your link problem, you need to use an absolute path.
// relative path — https://yourdomain.com/current/path/lang/en
English
Serbian
// absolute path — https://yourdomain.com/lang/en
English
Serbian