Controllers

Controllers in H3ravel organize your application logic and handle incoming requests. They receive a fully constructed HttpContext object, ensuring consistency and avoiding direct H3Event usage.

We could define all our request handling logic directly as closures within our route definitions, but where's the fun there when we can have them in dedicated controller classes for better structure and organization. Controllers allow you to consolidate related HTTP request logic into one cohesive class. Think of a UserController that manages every user-related action, from displaying profiles and creating new accounts to updating details and handling deletions. In H3ravel, these controllers are placed in src/app/Http/Controllers by default, keeping our codebase clean and scalable.

Creating a Controller

To whip up a new controller, run the make:controller Musket command. By default H3ravel will store all your app's controllers in the src/app/Http/Controllers directory:

$ npx musket make:controller UserController

Let's look at the structure of a basic controller. A controller may have several public methods which will respond to all incoming HTTP requests:

Example: UserController.ts

import { Controller } from '@h3ravel/core';
import { HttpContext } from '@h3ravel/http';
import User from 'App/Models/user';

export class UserController extends Controller {
  async show(user: User) {
    return await view('profile', {
      name: user.name,
      email: user.email,
      phone: user.phone,
    });
  }
}

HttpContext

Instead of directly working with H3Event, H3ravel injects a custom HttpContext object with:

• request: Access query params, body, headers, files
• response: Customize response status, headers, cookies

Example:

async index({ request, response }: HttpContext) {
  const page = request.query.page
  response.status(200)
  return { message: `You are on page ${page}` }
}

Returning Responses

You don’t need res.send or res.json. Simply returning a value from your controller method is all you need:

return { message: 'Success' }`

This automatically becomes the HTTP response.

Controller + API Resource Routes

When you use Route.apiResource, it automatically maps RESTful routes to controller methods:

Route.apiResource('users', UserController);

This route definition expects the UserController to have these methods:

• index
• store
• show
• update
• destroy

Constructor Injection (coming soon)

Controllers can receive services via constructor injection:

export class ProfileController extends Controller {
  constructor(private userService: UserService) {
    super();
  }

  async index({ request }: HttpContext) {
    return this.userService.getProfile();
  }
}