A use case for global route constraints

I got some additional reader feedback from the two possible solutions I shared for handling Postgres route model binding type issues.

One person pointed out that there is a pre-defined route constraint for integers that we can use instead of defining our own regex:

// routes/web.php
Route::get('/users/{user}', [UserController::class, 'show'])
    ->whereNumber('user');

That was a nice simplification. But it didn't really address the biggest annoyance with this approach, which is having to repeat it for each route.

Another reader offered a solution that potentially solves that problem. They mentioned Laravel's global constraints.

In your AppServiceProvider, you can register a constraint to apply to all parameters of a particular name.

// app/Providers/AppServiceProvider.php
public function boot(): void
{
    Route::pattern('user', '[0-9]+');
}

Now I don't need to do anything in my routes file, but I would either have to add a pattern for every model (user, post, and so on). Or I'd have to name the parameters something generic like {id}, which feels weird with the route model binding convention.

As I reflect on all these possible solutions, they all have some merit and some drawbacks. Honestly, though, I think the real solution is that Laravel should handle the problem for us, and not let the database differences leak through the Eloquent abstraction layer.

Here to help,

Joel

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