Learn about Using Repositories and Services in Laravel 5

Repositories are usually a common wrapper for your model and the place where you would write different queries to your database. A service on the other hand is a layer for handling all your application’s logic. It is useful to separate your application’s logic to a common service (service layer) so that your application starts growing, and you have only one class to maintain.

Also the concept of repositories and services ensures that you write reusable code and helps to keep your controller as simple as possible making them more readable.

What we will be building?

To illustrate the repository and services pattern, we’ll be building a simple blog CRUD application. This is a very simple example to describe the concept, but in reality, chances are you will be needing repositories and services for something more complex.

For the purpose of this tutorial, I’ll assume you’ve set up Laravel already.

Getting Started

Let’s set up our Model, Controller, and Migration. Thankfully, Laravel can handle this with a single command, using artisan run the following command:

Tip: The `-m` and `-c` flags will create a migration and controller file associated with the model for you.

In the database/migrations directory, delete the users and password migrations created by Laravel as we will not be needing it for this tutorial. Let’s edit the post migration to reflect the structure of our database.

<?php

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;

class CreatePostsTable extends Migration
{
    /**
     * Run the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::create('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->increments('id');
            $table->string('title');
            $table->string('body');
            $table->timestamps();
        });
    }

    /**
     * Reverse the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function down()
    {
        Schema::dropIfExists('posts');
    }
}

Post Model
We need to ensure attributes from our post model that are mass assignable. Edit app/Post.php with the following code:

<?php

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Post extends Model
{
    protected $fillable = ['title', 'body'];
}

Next, let’s run our migrations. Edit the .env file with your database configurations and then run:

Creating the Repository
Unfortunately, there’s no artisan command for creating repositories or services, you will have to do it manually. Head over to the app directory and create a repositories folder. In the repositories folder, create a PostRepository class and add the following code.

<?php

namespace App\Repositories;

use App\Post;

class PostRepository
{
  
  protected $post;

  public function __construct(Post $post)
  {
    $this->post = $post;
  }
    public function create($attributes)
  {
    return $this->post->create($attributes);
  }
  
  public function all()
  {
    return $this->post->all();
  }

  public function find($id)
  {
   return $this->post->find($id);
  }
  
  public function update($id, array $attributes)
  {
  return $this->post->find($id)->update($attributes);
  }
 
  public function delete($id)
  {
   return $this->post->find($id)->delete();
  }
}

We type-hint the Post model in the constructor of our class and perform a basic CRUD operation on our Post model. Don’t forget to add the namespace at the top of the class.

Creating the Service
In the app directory, create a services folder and add a PostService class to the folder. Edit the class you just created with the following code:

<?php

namespace App\Services;

use App\Post;
use App\Repositories\PostRepository;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;

class PostService
{
	public function __construct(PostRepository $post)
	{
		$this->post = $post ;
	}

	public function index()
	{
		return $this->post->all();
	}

            public function create(Request $request)
	{
             $attributes = $request->all();
         
             return $this->post->create($attributes);
	}
	return $post;
	}

	public function read($id)
	{
     return $this->post->find($id);
	}

	public function update(Request $request, $id)
	{
	  $attributes = $request->all();
	  
      return $this->post->update($id, $attributes);
	}

	public function delete($id)
	{
      return $this->post->delete($id);
	}
}

We inject the PostRepository dependency into the constructor of our PostService class. Like we said earlier, everything that has to do with our application logic goes into the service class so we can keep our controllers as thin as possible. In the PostService class, we define CRUD methods for our Post object and make several Eloquent queries using PostRepository.

Setting up our Routes
Our application will have five routes. Edit the route/web.php file with the following code:

<?php

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Web Routes
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Here is where you can register web routes for your application. These
| routes are loaded by the RouteServiceProvider within a group which
| contains the "web" middleware group. Now create something great!
|
*/

Route::get('/', 'PostController@index');
Route::post('/post', 'PostController@create');
Route::get('/post/{id}', 'PostController@read')->name('edit.post');
Route::put('/post/{id}', 'PostController@update')->name('update.post');
Route::delete('/post/{id}', 'PostController@delete')->name('destroy.post');

We make use of named routes here, which we shall be using shortly in our forms.

Controller Methods
In the app/Http/Controllers directory, edit the PostController class we created earlier with the following code:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Post;
use App\Http\Requests\PostRequest;
use App\Services\PostService;

class PostController 
{ 
	protected $postservice;

	public function __construct(PostService $postservice)
	{
		$this->postservice = $postservice;
	}
    public function index(){
       
    $posts = $this->postservice->index();
     
    return view('index', compact('posts'));
    }

    public function create(PostRequest $request)
    {
      
      $this->postservice->create($request);

      return back()->with(['status'=>'Post created successfully']);
    }

    public function read($id)
    {
       
       $post = $this->postservice->read($id);

       return view('edit', compact('post'));

    }

    public function update(PostRequest $request, $id)
    {

       $post = $this->postservice->update($request, $id);

     return redirect()->back()->with('status', 'Post has been updated succesfully');
    }

    public function delete($id)
    {
     $this->postservice->delete($id);

     return back()->with(['status'=>'Deleted successfully']);
    }
}

Since our PostService class already handles all of our application’s logic, all we need to do is inject the service into our controller’s constructor. We define CRUD methods in our controller as well and call their respective methods from the service class via the postservice property.

If you notice at the top of our controller, we imported a PostRequest class for validation purposes which we haven’t created yet. Using artisan, run the following command:

This will create a PostRequest class for us in the app\Http\Requests directory. Edit the authorize method to return true and add the validation rules to the rules() method. The PostRequest class should look like this:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Requests;

use Illuminate\Foundation\Http\FormRequest;

class PostRequest extends FormRequest
{
    /**
     * Determine if the user is authorized to make this request.
     *
     * @return bool
     */
    public function authorize()
    {
        return true;
    }

    /**
     * Get the validation rules that apply to the request.
     *
     * @return array
     */
    public function rules()
    {
        return [
            'title'=> 'required|min:3',
            'body'=> 'required|min:5'
        ];
    }
}
       
  

Creating our Views
Before visiting any of our routes in the browser, let’s quickly create our views. Head over to resources/views and create an index.blade.php file. This view will contain the form for creating a post and a table for listing all the available posts.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
   <head>
      <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width">
      <title>Laravel Repositories and Services</title>
      <meta name="description" content="">
      <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.5/css/bootstrap.min.css">
      <link href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/4.7.0/css/font-awesome.min.css" rel="stylesheet" crossorigin="anonymous">
   </head>
   <body>
      <div class="container">
         <div class="col-md-5">
            <h4 class="page-header">Laravel Repositories and Services </h4>
            @foreach ($errors->all() as $error)
            <p class="alert alert-danger">{{ $error }}</p>
            @endforeach 
            @if (session('status'))
            <div class="alert alert-success alert-dismissable">
               <a href="#" class="close" data-dismiss="alert" aria-label="close">x</a>
               {{ session('status')}}
            </div>
            @endif
            <form class="form-vertical" role="form" method="post" action="/post">
               {{csrf_field()}}
               <div class="form-group">
                  <input type="text" name="title" class="form-control" placeholder="Title">
               </div>
               <div class="form-group">
                  <textarea class="form-control" rows="5" name="body" class="form-control" placeholder="Content"></textarea>
               </div>
               <div class="form-group">
                  <button type="submit" class="btn btn-info">Submit Post</button>
               </div>
            </form>
            <table class="table table-bordered">
               <thead>
                  <tr>
                     <th>Title</th>
                     <th>Content </th>
                     <th>Edit</th>
                     <th>Delete</th>
                  </tr>
               </thead>
               @foreach($posts as $post)
               <tbody>
                  <tr>
                     <td>{{$post->title}}</td>
                     <td>{{$post->body}}</td>
                     <form action="{{route('edit.post', $post->id)}}" method="GET">
                        <td>
                           <p data-placement="top" data-toggle="tooltip" title="Delete"><button class="btn btn-success btn-xs" ><span class="fa fa-pencil fa-fw"></span></button></p>
                        </td>
                     </form>
                     <form action="{{route('destroy.post', $post->id)}}" method="POST">
                        {{csrf_field()}}
                        {{method_field('DELETE')}}
                        <td>
                           <p data-placement="top" data-toggle="tooltip" title="Delete"><button class="btn btn-danger btn-xs" ><span class="fa fa-fw fa-trash"></span></button></p>
                        </td>
                     </form>
                  </tr>
               </tbody>
               @endforeach
            </table>
         </div>
      </div>
   </body>
</html>

We created a form for submitting a post and then using a foreach loop, we loop through the post object we passed to our view from the index() method in our controller to display all the available posts. Each post will have an edit and a delete button enclosed within their respective form tags with their actions set to their respective named routes as well.

Now, you can visit your browser to see your application.

In the resources/views folder, create an edit.blade.php file. This is the view that will be returned whenever we want to edit a post. Add the following code to the file you just created.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
   <head>
      <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width">
      <title>Laravel Repositories and Services</title>
      <meta name="description" content="">
      <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.5/css/bootstrap.min.css">
      <link href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/4.7.0/css/font-awesome.min.css" rel="stylesheet" crossorigin="anonymous">
   </head>
   <body>
      <div class="container">
         <div class="col-md-5">
            <h4 class="page-header">Laravel Repositories and Services </h4>
            @foreach ($errors->all() as $error)
            <p class="alert alert-danger">{{ $error }}</p>
            @endforeach 
            @if (session('status'))
            <div class="alert alert-success">
               {{ session('status')}}
            </div>
            @endif
            <form class="form-vertical" role="form" method="post" action="{{route('update.post', $post->id)}}">
               {{csrf_field()}}
               {{method_field('PUT')}}
               <div class="form-group">
                  <input type="text" name="title" class="form-control" placeholder="Title" value="{{$post->title}}">
               </div>
               <div class="form-group">
                  <textarea class="form-control" rows="5" name="body" class="form-control" placeholder="Content">{{$post->body}}</textarea>
               </div>
               <div class="form-group">
                  <button type="submit" class="btn btn-info">Update Post</button>
               </div>
            </form>
         </div>
      </div>
   </body>
</html>

Conclusion: –
We’ve learnt how to utilize the concept of repository and services in Laravel by building a simple blog application.

About the Author

Tutor @ Eduonix

Administrator

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