How to define and use Route Groups in Laravel.

Route Groups in Laravel are used to unify and manage routing of multiple shared settings to reduce duplicate code and improve readability. Route Groups can centrally handle middleware, namespace, route prefix, subdomain binding and other configurations, such as: 1. Use prefix to set routing prefix, which is often used in API or background paths; 2. Unified middleware application through middleware; 3. Simplify controller calls with namespace; 4. Use domain to implement subdomain name routing; 5. Support nested routing groups to achieve finer granular control; 6. Provide unified prefix for route naming with as parameters to improve maintenance efficiency.

In Laravel, Route Groups is a very practical feature that allows you to uniformly configure and manage a set of routes. Through Route Groups, you can centrally handle middleware, namespace, route prefix, subdomain binding and other settings to avoid duplicate code and improve code readability and maintenance.

Why use Route Groups?

In actual development, we often encounter situations where multiple routes share the same configuration, such as:

• Multiple background management pages require auth and admin middleware
• API routing usually starts with /api
• The front-end pages use namespaces like App\Http\Controllers\HomeController

If you write configurations on each route, it will not only repeat, but also make mistakes prone. After using Route Groups, these configurations can be set uniformly and written only once.

How to define a Route Group?

Laravel's routing group is defined using Route::group() method, passing an array as configuration item, and then a closure to define all routes within the group.

 Route::group(['prefix' => 'admin', 'middleware' => 'auth'], function () {
    Route::get('dashboard', [AdminController::class, 'dashboard']);
    Route::get('users', [AdminController::class, 'users']);
});

The above code defines a routing group, and all routes in the group will be automatically prefixed with the /admin prefix and auth middleware is applied.

Common configuration items and usage scenarios

1. Routing prefix (prefix)

Applicable to API or background management pages. For example:

 Route::group(['prefix' => 'api/v1'], function () {
    Route::get('users', [UserController::class, 'index']);
});

The access path is: /api/v1/users

2. Middleware (middleware)

Middleware can be set uniformly for a set of routes:

 Route::group(['middleware' => ['auth', 'admin']]], function () {
    Route::get('admin/dashboard', [AdminController::class, 'dashboard']);
});

3. Namespace

If your controller is distributed in different directories, you can use the namespace:

 Route::group(['namespace' => 'Admin', 'prefix' => 'admin'], function () {
    Route::get('settings', [SettingsController::class, 'index']);
});

This way you can write SettingsController::class directly without writing the complete namespace.

4. Subdomain name routing (domain)

Suitable for multi-tenant or subsites:

 Route::group(['domain' => '{account}.example.com'], function () {
    Route::get('users', [UserController::class, 'index']);
});

Nested Groups

You can also nest a routing group in the routing group to achieve finer granular control:

 Route::group(['prefix' => 'admin', 'middleware' => 'auth'], function () {
    Route::group(['namespace' => 'Settings'], function () {
        Route::get('profile', [ProfileController::class, 'index']);
        Route::get('email', [EmailController::class, 'index']);
    });
});

In this way, /admin/profile and /admin/email will inherit prefix and middleware , and the controller uses Settings subnamespace.

Tips: Notes on naming routing groups

If you want to name the routes in the group, it is recommended to use as parameter to prefix the route group:

 Route::group(['prefix' => 'admin', 'as' => 'admin.'], function () {
    Route::get('dashboard', [AdminController::class, 'dashboard'])->name('dashboard');
});

In this way, you can call it through route('admin.dashboard') , the naming is clearer and easy to maintain.

Basically that's it. The core of Route Groups is "reuse" and "group management". Although it is simple to write, it can significantly improve the maintainability of the route if used properly.

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