Laravel Eloquent Resource Collection response - laravel

Question

So I am trying to use a resource collection to return datatable json information. Before I used my collection I first did a proof of concept that looked like this:
public function index()
{
$clients = QueryBuilder::for(Client::class)
->allowedIncludes('accounts')
->get();
if (request()->ajax()) {
return DataTables::of($clients)->make(true);
}
return view('client.index', compact('clients'));
}
This worked perfectly and the json response looked like so:
{data: [{id: "4428", number: "492501", name: "Test Client", email: "test#test.com",…},…]
draw:1
input:{view: "datatable", draw: "1",…}
recordsFiltered:2
recordsTotal:2}
Then I updated my index call to use my resource collection that looks like this:
public function toArray($request)
{
switch ($request->view) {
case 'datatable':
self::withoutWrapping();
return DataTables::of($this->collection)->make(true);
}
return parent::toArray($request);
}
The response is now plopped in an "original" attribute and a bunch of other items are added to the response. I don't understand why. It looks like this:
*callback: null
*charset: null
*content: <The above response is in here as a string>
*encodingOptions: 0
*statusCode: 200
*statusText: "OK"
*version: "1.0"
exception: null
headers: {}
original: <The above response is in here as an object>
I can set my dataSrc on datatables to original.data and it works fine but where did all this extra stuff come from? I have used a few other resource collections and never had all this stuff added in.
Update: because everything i am looking for is in "original" the pagination breaks as well as most of the other datatable functionality. If I move this return back into the controller it works fine.

Answer 1

So, the answer has to do with response type. The eloquent resource has an undocumented function called "toResponse" and if your return is going to be some kind of jsonResponse you need to modify it instead of your toArray method. What was happening was I was returning a JsonResponse and it was turning it into an array and just returning that json encoded.
To be clear as mud, here is my new Resource:
public function toResponse($request)
{
switch ($request->view) {
case 'datatable':
self::withoutWrapping();
return DataTables::of($this->collection)->toJson();
}
return parent::toResponse($request);
}
So, to reiterate, if you are returning an array or something that conforms to an array correctly (which datatables jsonresponse does not) you override "toArray". If you are returning a jsonResponse you need to override "toResponse".
Another option is to have your code start in toArray but when you know your going to return a jsonResponse you call $this->toResponse($request). Option is yours.