URL Generation

• Introduction
• The Basics
  • Generating URLs
  • Accessing the Current URL
• URLs for Named Routes
  • Signed URLs

Introduction

Hypervel provides several helpers to assist you in generating URLs for your application. These helpers are primarily helpful when building links in your templates and API responses, or when generating redirect responses to another part of your application.

The Basics

Generating URLs

The url helper may be used to generate arbitrary URLs for your application. The generated URL will automatically use the scheme (HTTP or HTTPS) and host from the current request being handled by the application:

$post = App\Models\Post::find(1);

echo url("/posts/{$post->id}");

// http://example.com/posts/1

Accessing the Current URL

If no path is provided to the url helper, an Hypervel\Router\UrlGenerator instance is returned, allowing you to access information about the current URL:

// Get the current URL without the query string...
echo url()->current();

// Get the current URL including the query string...
echo url()->full();

// Get the full URL for the previous request...
echo url()->previous();

Each of these methods may also be accessed via the URL facade:

use Hypervel\Support\Facades\URL;

echo URL::current();

URLs for Named Routes

The route helper may be used to generate URLs to named routes. Named routes allow you to generate URLs without being coupled to the actual URL defined on the route. Therefore, if the route's URL changes, no changes need to be made to your calls to the route function. For example, imagine your application contains a route defined like the following:

Route::get('/post/{post}', function (Post $post) {
    // ...
}, ['as' => 'post.show']);

To generate a URL to this route, you may use the route helper like so:

echo route('post.show', ['post' => 1]);

// http://example.com/post/1

Of course, the route helper may also be used to generate URLs for routes with multiple parameters:

Route::get('/post/{post}/comment/{comment}', function (Post $post, Comment $comment) {
    // ...
}, ['as' => 'comment.show']);

echo route('comment.show', ['post' => 1, 'comment' => 3]);

// http://example.com/post/1/comment/3

Any additional array elements that do not correspond to the route's definition parameters will be added to the URL's query string:

echo route('post.show', ['post' => 1, 'search' => 'rocket']);

// http://example.com/post/1?search=rocket

Signed URLs

Hypervel allows you to easily create "signed" URLs to named routes. These URLs have a "signature" hash appended to the query string which allows Laravel to verify that the URL has not been modified since it was created. Signed URLs are especially useful for routes that are publicly accessible yet need a layer of protection against URL manipulation.

For example, you might use signed URLs to implement a public "unsubscribe" link that is emailed to your customers. To create a signed URL to a named route, use the signedRoute method of the URL facade:

use Hypervel\Support\Facades\URL;

return URL::signedRoute('unsubscribe', ['user' => 1]);

You may exclude the domain from the signed URL hash by providing the absolute argument to the signedRoute method:

return URL::signedRoute('unsubscribe', ['user' => 1], absolute: false);

If you would like to generate a temporary signed route URL that expires after a specified amount of time, you may use the temporarySignedRoute method. When Laravel validates a temporary signed route URL, it will ensure that the expiration timestamp that is encoded into the signed URL has not elapsed:

use Hypervel\Support\Facades\URL;

return URL::temporarySignedRoute(
    'unsubscribe', now()->addMinutes(30), ['user' => 1]
);

Validating Signed Route Requests

To verify that an incoming request has a valid signature, you should call the hasValidSignature method on the incoming Hypervel\Http\Request instance:

use Hypervel\Http\Request;

Route::get('/unsubscribe/{user}', function (Request $request) {
    if (! $request->hasValidSignature()) {
        abort(401);
    }

    // ...
});

Sometimes, you may need to allow your application's frontend to append data to a signed URL, such as when performing client-side pagination. Therefore, you can specify request query parameters that should be ignored when validating a signed URL using the hasValidSignatureWhileIgnoring method. Remember, ignoring parameters allows anyone to modify those parameters on the request:

if (! $request->hasValidSignatureWhileIgnoring(['page', 'order'])) {
    abort(401);
}

Instead of validating signed URLs using the incoming request instance, you may assign the Hypervel\Router\Middleware\ValidateSignature middleware to the route. If it is not already present, you may assign this middleware an alias in your HTTP kernel's $middlewareAliases array:

/**
 * The application's middleware aliases.
 *
 * Aliases may be used to conveniently assign middleware to routes and groups.
 *
 * @var array<string, class-string|string>
 */
protected $middlewareAliases = [
    'signed' => \Hypervel\Router\Middleware\ValidateSignature::class,
];

Once you have registered the middleware in your kernel, you may attach it to a route. If the incoming request does not have a valid signature, the middleware will automatically return a 403 HTTP response:

Route::post('/unsubscribe/{user}', function (Request $request) {
    // ...
}, ['middleware' => 'signed']);

If your signed URLs do not include the domain in the URL hash, you should provide the relative argument to the middleware:

Route::post('/unsubscribe/{user}', function (Request $request) {
    // ...
}, ['middleware' => 'signed:relative']);

Responding to Invalid Signed Routes

When someone visits a signed URL that has expired, they will receive a generic error page for the 403 HTTP status code. However, you can customize this behavior by defining a custom "renderable" closure for the InvalidSignatureException exception in your exception handler. This closure should return an HTTP response:

use Hypervel\Router\Exceptions\InvalidSignatureException;

/**
 * Register the exception handling callbacks for the application.
 */
public function register(): void
{
    $this->renderable(function (InvalidSignatureException $e) {
        return response()->view('error.link-expired', [], 403);
    });
}