What is Laravel basic routing - redirect routes?

What are redirect routes? They are routes or URI that take an end-user to a page or resource different from the requested one. This can happen when a user has been authenticated and is taken to their dashboard, or when an end-user tries to access a page where they have no permission. Several reasons can call a redirect route in an application.

In Laravel, redirect responses are instances of the Illuminate\Http\RedirectResponse class. The simplest method to generate a RedirectResponse is to use the global redirect() helper. Do not forget to import the instance of the class.

A redirect response can be initiated from a route or a Controller, the simplest way of instantiating it from the route.

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

From the above code block, we notice that the user tried the uri login and was redirected to the /home/dashboard uri.

As stated above, one of the reasons for a redirect can be to send the user back to the login page if their entry fails authentication. This can be done using the global back helper function. Ensure that the route calling the back function uses the web middleware group or has all of the session middleware applied.

Route::post('/user/dashboard', function () {
//validate request
       return back();
});

Normally, from the Controller, we would like to return a view where the data can be displayed.

return view('home.dashboard');

However, when it comes to redirecting the user to another route, we use:

return redirect()->route('home');

This would take the request to a home uri, not the view where the application would further process it. Always make sure to call the Illuminate\Http\RedirectResponse class to avoid throwing errors.

Summary

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This was just a touch-up on the basics of redirect routes as they are more advanced. Redirect routes basically take a user a uriother than the one they requested.