Laravel 4 : Route to localhost/controller/action

Question

I'm more or less new to Laravel 4. I've never used routes before but normally what I'm used to is url/controller/action and then the backend routing for me. I've read the documentation for routes and controllers a few times as well as read through some tutorials and so, I'm trying to figure out how to get this to work without writing a route for every controller and action.

I tried something like

Route::get('{controller}/{action}', function($controller, $action = 'index'){
    return $controller."@".$action;
});

Now then, I know this is wrong since it doesn't work, but what am I missing? On most tutorials and stuff I'm seeing an route for more or less every controller and action like:

Route::get('/controller/action' , 'ControllerName@Action');

Which seems silly and like a waste of time to me.

Is there anyway to achieve what I want?

Answer 1

If you are looking for a more automated routing, this would be the Laravel 4 way:

Route:

Route::controller('users', 'UsersController');

Controller (in this case UsersController.php):

public function getIndex()
{
    // routed from GET request to /users
}

public function getProfile()
{
    // routed from GET request to /users/profile
}

public function postProfile()
{
    // routed from POST request to /users/profile
}

public function getPosts($id)
{
    // routed from GET request to: /users/posts/42
}

As The Shift Exchange mentioned, there are some benefits to doing it the verbose way. In addition to the excellent article he linked, you can create a name for each route, for example:

Route::get("users", array(
    "as"=>"dashboard",
    "uses"=>"UsersController@getIndex"
));

Then when creating urls in your application, use a helper to generate a link to a named route:

$url = URL::route('dashboard');

Links are then future proofed from changes to controllers/actions.

You can also generate links directly to actions which would still work with automatic routing.

$url = URL::action('UsersController@getIndex');