Accessing Laravel request properties dynamically a no-no

September 14, 2020

Laravel offers multiple ways of accessing request properties. You can browse through the official documentation for a full list of the available methods.

One and very popular way for accessing request properties is via Dynamic Properties. According to the Laravel documentation, this is what happens internally when you use dynamic properties:

While this is a very powerful feature I do not recommend developer use it for the following reasons:

1.Same property in input and route parameters

The same property might exist in both the route parameters and the input parameters. For example take the request below:

$name = $request->name;

If you meant to access the name from the route parameter then $name would be incorrect since laravel would return the value from the input parameters.

2. Less intuitive

When I am reading through a codebase, I like to look at a variable and immediately guess where the value is coming from . With the usage of dynamic properties, this makes that impossible, thus making the code more difficult to understand at first look.

Laravel offers other more intuitive methods for accessing request properties for all kind of scenarios without having to use dynamic properties such that when another developer is reading through your codebase, they can immediately guess where a variable is coming from. See table below:

What of $request->get?

$request->get works because the method belongs to Symfony HttpFoundation and is not usually needed when using Laravel. In fact, there is no mention of it within the Laravel documentation, so if I where you I will stay away from, $request->get.

Another reason you should use $request->input over $request->get is because $request->input is more powerful and can be used with array/JSON inputs by using “dot” notation to access the array or JSON properties like below:

$name = $request->input('products.0.name');

$names = $request->input('products.*.name');

Why is $request->route not documented?

Actually it is indirectly documented in the route section. You can access the current route using $request->route and this can also be used to access the route parameters like so:

$userId = $request->route('user_id');
 
// With Default Value
$names = $request->route('user_id', '1');

Laravel supports dependency injection for route parameters, so if you are a fan of route model binding like me then you should consider using parameter injection instead of $request->route. As an example, say you have a route as defined below:

Route::put('user/{id}', [UserController::class, 'update']);

You may still type-hint the Illuminate\Http\Request and access your route parameter {id} by defining your controller method as follows:

public function update(Request $request, $id)
{
    //
}