Search object by slug and not by id - laravel

Question

I'm a relative beginner with Laravel (using version 5.2.3) and have been working through tutorials on Laracasts and then doing a bit of my own experimenting.
I successfully set up a route that fetches an item from a table by its ID, as shown below
Route::get('/wiseweasel/{id}', 'WiseweaselController#singleArticle');
For simplicity, the controller simply dd's the article
public function singleArticle($id)
{
$article = ww_articles::find($id);
dd($article);
}
This works absolutely fine - I visit eg /wiseweasel/2 and get the contents of the record with id2.
So, I then wanted to use the slug field from the record instead of the id. Since I know the ID method was working, I've tried just modifying this route and controller (also tried creating anew, neither worked) So I now have:
Route::get('/wiseweasel/{slug}', 'WiseweaselController#singleArticle');
and
public function singleArticle($slug)
{
$article = ww_articles::find($slug);
dd($article);
}
The slug for the second record is "secondarticle". So, visiting the url /wiseweasel/secondarticle, I would expect to see the same record as previously dd'd out. Instead, I end up with null.
Even more oddly, using the original id route (/wiseweasel/2) still returns the record... when I have removed all trace of this from the routes and controller, so I would expect this to fail...
This is making me wonder if this could be some odd caching issue? I've tried
php artisan route:clear
in case the route was being cached. I've also tried restarting both Apache and MySql (I'm using XAMMP for both).
Still no luck though... not sure if I've misunderstood how something works or what's going on... so if anyone has any suggestions as to what I might have done wrong, or anything to try, I would be very grateful! :)

Answer 1

You also have the option of using Route Model Binding to take care of this and inject the resolved instance into your methods.
With the new implicit Route Model Binding you can tell the model what key it should use for route binding.
// routes
Route::get('/wiseweasel/{article}', 'WiseweaselController#singleArticle');
// Article model
public function getRouteKeyName()
{
return 'slug';
}
// controller
public function singleArticle(Article $article)
{
dd($article);
}
Laravel Docs - Route Model Binding

Answer 2

Laravel won't automatically know that for slug it should search record in different way.
When you are using:
$article = ww_articles::find($slug);
you are telling Laravel - find record of www_articles by ID. (no matter you call this id $slug).
To achieve what you want change:
$article = ww_articles::find($slug);
into
$article = ww_articles::where('slug', $slug)->first();
This will do the trick (for slug put the name of column in table in database). Of course remember that in this case slug should be unique in all records or you won't be able to get all the slugs.

Answer 3

Maybe it's a bit late for the answer but there is another way to keep using find method and use slug as your table identifier. You have to set the protected $primaryKey property to 'slug' in your model.
class ww_articles extends Model
{
protected $primaryKey = 'slug';
...
}
This will work because find method internally uses the getQualifiedKeyName method from Model class which uses the $primaryKey property.

Answer 4

If you have both routes like this
Route::get('/wiseweasel/{id}', 'WiseweaselController#singleArticle');
Route::get('/wiseweasel/{slug}', 'WiseweaselController#singleArticle');
it will always use the first one. Obviously, there is no id 'secondarticle', so it returns null (although in this case it doesn't matter, they both point to the same method).
The reason is route will search through possible routes till it finds a matching, which is always the one with {id}. Why? You're not telling Route that {id} must match an integer!
You can make sure {id} is understood as an integer, however I suggest using urls like this is a better option
/wiseweasel/{id}/{slug?}
Another suggestion. Do not use names such as xx_articles for a model, but Article instead. This way you can use the new implicit route binding. So using implicit route binding your url would look like this (assuming your model is called Article)
Route::get('/wiseweasel/{article}', 'WiseweaselController#singleArticle');