Get all routes that start with rt_

Question

The code reads all my routes and return to my JQUERY AJAX the names of the routes without duplicates and just those that have "rt_" prefix.

class RouteController extends Controller {
    public function getRoutes()
    {
        
        //Get all the routes.
        $routes = Route::getRoutes();

        
        //Setting up the vars
        $array = [''];

        
        
        foreach ($routes as $route) {
            $condicional = substr($route->getName(), 0, 3);
            $found = FALSE;

           //Filtering the routes with rt_ prefix
            if ($condicional == 'rt_') {

                 //Filering duplicates
                foreach ($array as $item) {
                    if ($item == $route->getName()) {
                        $found = TRUE;


                    }

                }

                
                //Echo without duplicates
                if ($found == FALSE) {
                    $array[] = $route->getName();

                }
            }
        }

        return response()->json($array, 200);

    }


}

Answer 1

One way to simplify this would be to create a collection with collect() and then call getName() on each route using Collection::map(). Then use collection::filter() to filter out the routes that don't start with rt_ using the string helper method Str::startsWith()

class RouteController extends Controller {
    public function getRoutes()
    { 
        // call getName on each route and then get unique values
        $uniqueRoutes = collect(Route::getRoutes())
            ->map(fn($route) => $route->getName())
            ->unique();

        //filter out any routes not starting with rt_
        $filteredRoutes = $uniqueRoutes->filter(function($name) {
             return Str::startsWith($name, 'rt_');
        });
        return response()->json($filteredRoutes, 200);

    }
}

_{Note - the uses the PHP 7.4 arrow function syntax could be used to simplify the callback to the filter() method}

One could also use collection::reduce() to only add routes to the list that contain the desired prefix.

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The existing code contains this block:

          //Filering duplicates
           foreach ($array as $item) {
               if ($item == $route->getName()) {
                   $found = TRUE;
               }
           }

That could be simplified using the PHP function in_array().

---

Another suggestion is to always use strict equality comparisons (i.e. === and !==) when possible - e.g. when $found should either be true or false then compare without the possibility of type conversion (i.e. with ==).