Method in Laravel to give a JSON response indicating whether the user may edit

Question

I'm working on creating code with a nice balance between concise and readable. How would you improve this Laravel code block to make it more compact and readable?

    public function canEdit(Request $request)
    {
        $canEdit = Permission::canEdit(
            $request->user(), 
            $request->siteModel
        );

        $statusCode = ($canEdit) ? 200 : 403;

        return Response()
            ->json([
                'can-edit' => $canEdit
            ], $statusCode);
    }

Really looking forward for some comments / suggestions.

Answer 1

I agree with mickmackusa that your code is pretty good overall. If you wanted to condense it, you can refactor to something like below:

public function canEdit(Request $request) {
  $canEdit = Permission::canEdit($request->user(), $request->siteModel);

  return response()->json(['can-edit' => $canEdit], $canEdit ? 200 : 403);
}

• Placing the opening brace on the same line as your canEdit() definition can help condense, but if you use a newline, keep it consistent
• Both the $canEdit = ...; definition and return response()->json(..); statements are under the recommended 80 characters line length, so removing the line breaks is fine
• The definition of $statusCode can be removed in favour of an in-line ternary as the 2nd parameter to your json() method, as defining a variable for a single use is unnecessary
• You can add or remove a line-break between your two statements, I prefer an empty line before return, but depends on your configuration/consistency