Response

Every route and controller is expected to produce a response for delivery to the user's browser. Elemental offers various methods for generating responses. The simplest form of response involves returning a string directly from a route or controller. The framework will seamlessly convert this string into a complete HTTP response.

Route::get('/', function  () {
	return  'Hello World';
});

In addition to returning strings from your routes and controllers, you may also return arrays or objects. The framework will automatically convert them into a JSON response:

Route::get('/', function  () {
	return [1, 2, 3];
});

Response Objects

Usually, you won't merely return straightforward strings or arrays from your route actions. Instead, you'll often return complete instances of Core\Response\Response or views.

Returning a full Response instance allows you to customize the response's HTTP status code and headers. You can inject the Response instance by type-hinting the Response instance inside your controller or route closure.

use Core\Response\Response;

Route::get('/home', function(Response $response) {
	$response->setHeader("content-type", "text/plain")
			->setStatusCode(200)
			->setContent("Hello World");

	return  response;
});

You can of course return a view from a controller. However, If you need control over the response's status and headers but also need to return a view as the response's content, you can do that as following:

use Core\Response\Response;

class UserController
{
	public function register(Response $response)
	{
		$response->setHeader("x-is_register", "true");
		return view("Register");
	}
}

This will automatically set the header on the view response that will be sent to the browser.

Response Content

Keep in mind that most response methods are chainable, allowing for the fluent construction of response instances.

You may set the content of the response by using setContent method on the response instance.

$response->setContent("...");

However, if you want to append to the content of the response, you can do so by using appendContent method on the response instance.

$response->appendContent("...");

Response Header

You may set a header on the response instance by using setHeader method

$response->setHeader("content-type", "text/plain");

However, if you want to set several headers simultaneously, you can do so by using setHeaders method and passing an array of headers.

$response->setHeaders(["content-type" => "text/html", ...]);

Response Status Code

You may directly set the status code of the response by using setHeader method on the response instance.

$response->setStatusCode(301);

A status text will be set by default for the common status codes.

Redirects

You can generate a redirect response that contains the proper headers needed to redirect the user to another URL by invoking static method redirect on the Core\Response\Response class.

use Core\Response\Response;

Route::get('/dashboard', function  () {
	return Response::redirect('home/dashboard');
});

However, for simplicity a helper method redirect() is also available globally to achieve the same functionality.

use Core\Response\Response;

Route::post('/story/create', function  () {
	if(!$someCondition) {
		return redirect('/story', 204);
	}
});

JSON Response

You can also generate a JSON response by calling the static method JSON on the Core\Response\Response class. The data passed to the method will be converted to proper JSON. You can also optionally pass the status code and headers array as the second and third argument to the function.

use Core\Response\Response;

Route::post('/post', function  () {
	$post = (...);
	return Response::JSON($post, 201, ["header"=>"value"]);
});