Laravel API APP Many-Many Relationship, how to return specific information in JSON? - laravel

Question

I been trying to figure this out for some time now. Basically i got 2 models ' Recipe ', ' Ingredient ' and one Controller ' RecipeController ' .
I'm using Postman to test my API. When i go to my get route which uses RecipeController#getRecipe, the return value is as per the pic below:
Return for Get Route
If i want the return value of the get route to be in the FORMAT of the below pic, how do i achieve this? By this i mean i don't want to see for the recipes: the created_at column, updated_at column and for ingredients: the pivot information column, only want name and amount column information.
Return Value Format I Want
Recipe model:
<?php
namespace App;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
class Recipe extends Model
{
protected $fillable = ['name', 'description'];
public function ingredients()
{
return $this->belongsToMany(Ingredient::class,
'ingredient_recipes')->select(array('name', 'amount'));
}
}
Ingredient Model:
<?php
namespace App;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
class Ingredient extends Model
{
protected $fillable = ['name', 'amount'];
}
RecipeController
<?php
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use App\Ingredient;
use App\Recipe;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
class RecipeController extends Controller {
public function postRecipe(Request $request)
{
$recipe = new Recipe();
$recipe->name = $request->input('name');
$recipe->description = $request->input('description');
$recipe->save();
$array_ingredients = $request->input('ingredients');
foreach ($array_ingredients as $array_ingredient) {
$ingredient = new Ingredient();
$ingredient->name = $array_ingredient['ingredient_name'];
$ingredient->amount = $array_ingredient['ingredient_amount'];
$ingredient->save();
$recipe->ingredients()->attach($ingredient->id);
}
return response()->json(['recipe' => $recipe . $ingredient], 201);
}
public function getRecipe()
{
$recipes = Recipe::all();
foreach ($recipes as $recipe) {
$recipe = $recipe->ingredients;
}
$response = [
'recipes' => $recipes
];
return response()->json($response, 200);
}
API Routes:
Route::post('/recipe', 'RecipeController#postRecipe')->name('get_recipe');
Route::get('/recipe', 'RecipeController#getRecipe')->name('post_recipe');
Thanks Guys!

Answer 1

I think your best solution is using Transformer. Using your current implementation what I would recommend is fetching only the needed field in your loop, i.e:
foreach ($recipes as $recipe) {
$recipe = $recipe->ingredients->only(['ingredient_name', 'ingredient_amount']);
}
While the above might work, yet there is an issue with your current implementation because there will be tons of iteration/loop polling the database, I would recommend eager loading the relation instead.
But for the sake of this question, you only need Transformer.
Install transformer using composer composer require league/fractal Then you can create a directory called Transformers under the app directory.
Then create a class called RecipesTransformer, and initialize with:
namespace App\Transformers;
use App\Recipe;
use League\Fractal\TransformerAbstract;
class RecipesTransformer extends TransformerAbstract
{
public function transform(Recipe $recipe)
{
return [
'name' => $recipe->name,
'description' => $recipe->description,
'ingredients' =>
$recipe->ingredients->get(['ingredient_name', 'ingredient_amount'])->toArray()
];
}
}
Then you can use this transformer in your controller method like this:
use App\Transformers\RecipesTransformer;
......
public function getRecipe()
{
return $this->collection(Recipe::all(), new RecipesTransformer);
//or if you need to get one
return $this->item(Recipe::first(), new RecipesTransformer);
}
You can refer to a good tutorial like this for more inspiration, or simply go to Fractal's page for details.
Update
In order to get Fractal collection working since the example I gave would work if you have Dingo API in your project, you can manually create it this way:
public function getRecipe()
{
$fractal = app()->make('League\Fractal\Manager');
$resource = new \League\Fractal\Resource\Collection(Recipe::all(), new RecipesTransformer);
return response()->json(
$fractal->createData($resource)->toArray());
}
In case you want to make an Item instead of collection, then you can have new \League\Fractal\Resource\Item instead. I would recommend you either have Dingo API installed or you can follow this simple tutorial in order to have in more handled neatly without unnecessary repeatition