php - Laravel best strategy to serve requests from API and form at the same time

Solution:

The simply way would be to check what kind of response you should send back:

   //In PaymentController.php

   public function store()
    {
        $inputData = $this->validateRequest();

        $person = $this->personRepository->findOneByAttribute('id_number', request('id_number'));

        if ($person instanceof Person) {
            $this->paymentRepository->create($inputData, $person);
            if (request()->expectsJson()) {
                return response('', 201); // Just a successfully created response 
            }
            return back()->with('successMessage', 'Your payment request registered successfully.');
        } else {
            if (request()->expectsJson()) {
                return response()->json([ 'error' => 'Not found' ], 404); // You can change the error code and message (or remove the message) as needed
            }
            return back()->with('failureMessage', 'Shoot! Cannot find a person with the given Identification Number.')->withInput();
        }
    }
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You can of course choose to encapsulate this in a class that implements the interface

class PaymentResponse implements Responsible {
     private $success;
     public function __construct($success) {
           $this->success = $success;
     }

     public function toResponse($request) {
         if ($this->success) {
            if (request()->expectsJson()) {
                return response()->json([ 'error' => 'Not found' ], 404); // You can change the error code and message (or remove the message) as needed
            }
            return back()->with('failureMessage', 'Shoot! Cannot find a person with the given Identification Number.')->withInput();
          } 
          if (request()->expectsJson()) {
              return response()->json([ 'error' => 'Not found' ], 404); // You can change the error code and message (or remove the message) as needed
          }
          return back()->with('failureMessage', 'Shoot! Cannot find a person with the given Identification Number.')->withInput();
     }
  
}
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//In PaymentController.php

   public function store()
    {
        $inputData = $this->validateRequest();

        $person = $this->personRepository->findOneByAttribute('id_number', request('id_number'));

        if ($person instanceof Person) {
            $this->paymentRepository->create($inputData, $person);
            return new PaymentResponse(true);
        } else {
            return new PaymentResponse(false);
        }
    }
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Solution:

I think another approach would be to make use of service-repository pattern. You wrap your application service in a separate class. A service is the interactor between controller and repository. The flow would look like[request] -> [controller] -> [service] -> [repository].

By leveraging this pattern you can then resuse your service in different areas in the app. For example you can have a controller specific for serving traditional web apps, and a controller for serving SPA, by returning JSON data, but serve the same business process.

E.g. :

Payment Response:

class PaymentStoreResponse
{
    protected $message;
    protected $code;
    protected $extraData;

    public function __construct($message, $code, $extraData = "")
    {
        $this->message = $message;
        $this->code = $code;
        $this->extraData = $extraData;
    }

    public function getMessage()
    {
        return $this->message;
    }

    public function getCode()
    {
        return $this->code;
    }
    
    public function getExtraData()
    {
        return $this->extraData;
    }
}
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Payment Service:

function store($data)
{
    $person = $this->personRepository->findOneByAttribute('id_number', $data('id_number'));

    if ($person instanceof Person) {
        $this->paymentRepository->create($inputData, $person);
        return new PaymentResponse("paymentSuccess", 201, "successMessage");
    } else {
        return new PaymentResponse("notFound", 404, "failureMessage");
    }
}
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Controller:

// App\Controllers\Web\PaymentController.php
function store(Request $request)
{
    $inputData = $this->validateRequest();
    $response = $this->paymentService->store($inputData);
    
    return back()->with($response->getExtraData(), $response->getMessage()) 
}


// App\Controllers\Api\PaymentController.php
function store(Request $request)
{
    // validation might be different because
    // api might need to authenticate with jwt etc.
    $inputData = $this->validateRequest();
    $response = $this->paymentService->store($inputData);

    return response()->json(['message' => $response->getMessage()], $response->getCode());
}
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This will result in a cleaner controller because the controller will only handle request validation and response, while delegating business process to the service class (payment service). The business logic is also centralized in the service layer, which means if there is a change to the business, it will apply to the API controller and Web controller. Hence, it will save you from a refactoring nightmare.

You can explore different architectures such as Clean Architecture + DDD. It will make your development experience better, achieving a centralized domain logic, and low coupling between layers by depending on abstractions.