Laravel 12 Routing Features: A Comprehensive Guide with Examples

Laravel Routing Features

Looking to enhance your Laravel applications with the powerful routing features in Laravel 12? This guide will walk you through the most important routing capabilities with practical examples that you can implement right away.

1. Basic Route Definitions

Laravel’s routing system is simple yet powerful. Here’s how to define basic routes:

// routes/web.php
Route::get('/', function () {
    return view('welcome');
});

Route::get('/about', function () {
    return 'About Us Page';
});

2. API Routes

You may enable API routing using the install:api Artisan command:

php artisan install:api

The install:api command installs Laravel Sanctum, which provides a robust, yet simple API token authentication guard which can be used to authenticate third-party API consumers, SPAs, or mobile applications. In addition, the install:api command creates the routes/api.php file:

<?php

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Route;

Route::get('/user', function (Request $request) {
    return $request->user();
})->middleware('auth:sanctum');