Easy way to extend the Request class?

[gthedev]

Is there an easy way to extend the default Illuminate\Http\Request class? Across multiple projects I have found that it would be useful to have a custom class that can automatically be injected as the default Request class but extend it with some extra methods.

For example, the ApiRequest class could extend the Request class to have methods to check the versioning based on the headers or query params. Or in another case with multiple different authenticatable user Models the extended Request class could have different methods for ->user() ->customer() ->admin() etc.

Currently to achieve that this is what I did in my AppServiceProvider:

        $this->app->bind(ApiRequest::class, function () {
            $request = ApiRequest::createFrom($this->app['request']);

            return $request;
        });

Feels a little hacky and additionally getting app('request') will still return the original Request class instance. Is there a better way to achieve this and extend/override the default Request class?

[fun4life1990]

Hi!

You can create your own descendant of Laravel Request. For example:

class BaseRequest extends Request
{
    public function expectsJson()
    {
        return true;
    }

    public function wantsJson()
    {
        return true;
    }
}

And then use it directly in your index.php:

$kernel = $app->make(Kernel::class);

$response = tap($kernel->handle(
    $request = BaseRequest::capture()
))->send();

$kernel->terminate($request, $response);

And that all!

However in your artisan you would still get Laravel native request.

[dennisprudlo]

The default request class is macroable.

framework/src/Illuminate/Http/Request.php

Lines 20 to 25 in eb378fc

	class Request extends SymfonyRequest implements Arrayable, ArrayAccess
	{
	use Concerns\InteractsWithContentTypes,
	Concerns\InteractsWithFlashData,
	Concerns\InteractsWithInput,
	Macroable;

So you could simply extend the request class. Put this in the boot method of one of your service providers:

Request::macro('apiVersion', function ()  {
    return request()->header('api-version') ?? 'latest';
});

And then in your controller or wherever you need the api version:

$apiVersion = request()->apiVersion();

[gthedev]

Thanks Dennis, that is what I do often now, my only problem is that there is no type-hinting/static-analysis support for this as the IDE & analysis tools do not understand this magic 😞

[dennisprudlo]

Yeah thats true. Another way would be to overwrite the request item in the container.

// for dependency injection
$this->app->bind(ApiRequest::class, function () {
    return ApiRequest::createFrom($this->app['request']);
});

// for the global helpers to retrieve the request
$this->app->bind('request', function () {
    return $this->app[ApiRequest::class];
});

app('request') // ApiRequest
request() // ApiRequest

But in any way the request() helper type-hints a return value of Illuminate\Http\Request so you will need to overwrite that type-hint so your IDE will know it's a different type:

/** @var ApiRequest */
request()->...

Or of course you use dependency injection

[gthedev]

Yeah your first code snippet is exactly what I ended up doing together with the Dependency Injection to get the proper hinting & analysis, I guess then that's the best way to achieve this at the moment. Thanks!