Laravel 5: Accessing and Sending HTTP Responses With response

The response helper function is a useful function that can be used to accomplish two different tasks. If no arguments are supplied to the response function, an implementation of "Illuminate\Contracts\Routing\ResponseFactory" will be returned (by default this is an instance of "Illuminate\Routing\ResponseFactory").

#Signature

The signature of the response function is:

1function response(
2    $content = '',
3    $status = 200,
4    array $headers = []
5);

#Example Use

The following example demonstrates some of the different methods that are available when the response function is used in this way:

1return response()->view('welcome');
2return response()->json(['Laravel' => 'Companion']);
3return response()->redirectTo('/');

The response function can also be used as a shortcut to the ResponseFactory::make method. If any arguments are supplied to the response function, the function will internally make a call to the ResponseFactory::make method passing all the arguments and returning the result (a new instance of "Illuminate\Http\Response"). The following examples are equivalent in their end results:

1return response()->make('I am the response content!');
2return response('I am the response content!');

If the above examples had been returned from a controller or route the user would see the text I am the response content! in their browser.

#Changing the HTTP Status Code

To change the status code of the response simply supply an argument for the $status parameter:

1// Create a response with the `404` status code.
2return response('That page was not found.', 404);

#Supplying Additional Headers

In order to supply extra headers we must also provide an argument for $status and then supply an argument for $headers:

1// Create a response with a "404: Not Found" status code and extra headers:
2return response('Page not found.', 404, [
3    'Cache-Control' => 'public'
4]);

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