Laravel’s abort() helper explained
According to the official documentation:
The abort function throws an HTTP exception which will be rendered by the exception handler:
abort(403). View more
What the documentation doesn’t say is that you can also pass either a
Illuminate\Contracts\Support\Responsable::class or a \Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response::class instance, as a parameter to the abort() helper.
So, you could return a JSON response if you want:
| <?php | |
| abort( | |
| response()->json(['message' => 'Ooops!.'], 402) | |
| ); |
The example above will return a 402 response with the following content:
| { | |
| "message": "Ooops!." | |
| } |
An Illuminate\Http\Exceptions\HttpResponseException::class is thrown by the abort() method, and captured by the Illuminate\Foundation\Exceptions::class
| <?php | |
| class Handler implements ExceptionHandlerContract | |
| { | |
| //... | |
| public function render($request, Exception $e) | |
| { | |
| if (method_exists($e, 'render') && $response = $e->render($request)) { | |
| return Router::toResponse($request, $response); | |
| } elseif ($e instanceof Responsable) { | |
| return $e->toResponse($request); | |
| } | |
| $e = $this->prepareException($e); | |
| if ($e instanceof HttpResponseException) { | |
| return $e->getResponse(); | |
| } elseif ($e instanceof AuthenticationException) { | |
| return $this->unauthenticated($request, $e); | |
| } elseif ($e instanceof ValidationException) { | |
| return $this->convertValidationExceptionToResponse($e, $request); | |
| } | |
| return $request->expectsJson() | |
| ? $this->prepareJsonResponse($request, $e) | |
| : $this->prepareResponse($request, $e); | |
| } | |
| } |
As you can see in both cases, if ($e instanceof Responsable) or if ($e instanceof HttpResponseException), the render() function will just resolve the response that was passed as the first argument to the abort() helper.
This is the source code for the abort() helper:
| <?php | |
| if (! function_exists('abort')) { | |
| /** | |
| * Throw an HttpException with the given data. | |
| * | |
| * @param \Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response|\Illuminate\Contracts\Support\Responsable|int $code | |
| * @param string $message | |
| * @param array $headers | |
| * @return void | |
| * | |
| * @throws \Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Exception\HttpException | |
| * @throws \Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\Exception\NotFoundHttpException | |
| */ | |
| function abort($code, $message = '', array $headers = []) | |
| { | |
| if ($code instanceof Response) { | |
| throw new HttpResponseException($code); | |
| } elseif ($code instanceof Responsable) { | |
| throw new HttpResponseException($code->toResponse(request())); | |
| } | |
| app()->abort($code, $message, $headers); | |
| } | |
| } |
Wrapping up
Using the abort() method is a clean and nice way to return an early response from anywhere in your application if needed, such as a static view, an error, a JSON response, and so on.