Laravel Resources many different requests for the same Resource instance - laravel

Question

I'm using Laravel Resource as a tool to sending API data. However, when I make just a basic controller with CRUD methods - all methods are different, for example
public function show(Offer $offer)
{
return $offer;
}
public function index()
{
return Offer::orderBy('created_at','desc')->get();
}
So I created OfferResource and for show method it's:
return new OfferResource($offer);
class OfferResource extends Resource
{
/**
* Transform the resource into an array.
*
* #param \Illuminate\Http\Request $request
* #return array
*/
public function toArray($request)
{
return [
'id' => $this->id,
'body' => $this->body,
'title' => $this->title,
'specialities' => $this->specialities()->pluck('speciality_id'),
'specialities_name' => $this->specialities()->pluck('name')
];
}
}
how should I call OfferResource for method index()?
Should I create another Resource "Controller"? or is there a different approach to use the same OfferResource?

Answer 1

You can use collection() method to use this resource for index -
return OfferResource::collection(Offer::orderBy('created_at','desc')->get());
And it is best to use a resource for multiple purpose if you can use rather than creating new one for each purpose.
As we all know the concepts of code re-use, the very basic foundation of OOP, we want to write ones but use multiple times. That's why we write Resource class to use whenever we need to transform our data to a array in predefined format. And requirement always change, so it would be much better to use resource to keep up with changes.
A resource class represents a single model that needs to be transformed into a JSON structure.
public function toArray($request)
{
return [
'id' => $this->id,
'name' => $this->name,
'email' => $this->email,
'created_at' => $this->created_at,
'updated_at' => $this->updated_at,
];
}
Laravel also provide a way to use this method to transform a collection of resources using collection() method.