Prevent repeating almost identical code in laravel

I have a controller in my API that contains methods that fetches various data from different tables like account statuses, account types, etc and returns it to the API consumer.

use App\Models\AccountStatus;
use App\Models\AccountType;
use App\Models\AlertLevel;

class ClientController extends Controller
{
   public function getAccountStatuses() {
        try {
            $accountStatuses = AccountStatus::all();

            return response()->json([
                'error' => false,
                'message' => 'OK',
                'account_statuses' => $accountStatuses
            ]);
        } catch (\Exception $e) {
            return response()->json([
                'error' => true,
                'message' => $e->getMessage() . ' ' . $e->getFile() . ' ' . $e->getLine()
            ], 500);
        }
    }

    public function getAccountTypes() {
        try {
            $accountTypes = AccountType::all();

            return response()->json([
                'error' => false,
                'message' => 'OK',
                'account_types' => $accountTypes
            ]);
        } catch (\Exception $e) {
            return response()->json([
                'error' => true,
                'message' => $e->getMessage() . ' ' . $e->getFile() . ' ' . $e->getLine()
            ], 500);
        }
    }

    public function getAlertLevels() {
        try {
            $alertLevels = AlertLevel::all();

            return response()->json([
                'error' => false,
                'message' => 'OK',
                'alert_levels' => $alertLevels
            ]);
        } catch (\Exception $e) {
            return response()->json([
                'error' => true,
                'message' => $e->getMessage() . ' ' . $e->getFile() . ' ' . $e->getLine()
            ], 500);
        }
    }
}

How do i prevent myself from repeating these almost identical code?

If you want to do some clean code, you should create a Class which will contain a function to handle your duplicate code:

class ResponseBuilder
{
public function createResponseFromData(string $dataResponseKey, $data) 
{
try {
return response()->json([
'error' => false,
'message' => 'OK',
$dataResponseKey => $data
]);
} catch (\Exception $e) {
return response()->json([
'error' => true,
'message' => $e->getMessage() . ' ' . $e->getFile() . ' ' . $e->getLine()
], 500);
}
}
}

This will respect Single Responsability Principle, and in your Controller, just inject it and use it:

private ResponseBuilder $responseBuilder;
public function __construct(ResponseBuilder $responseBuilder)
{
$this->responseBuilder = $responseBuilder; 
}
public function getAccountStatuses() 
{
$accountStatuses = AccountStatus::all();
return $this->responseBuilder->createResponseFromData('account_statuses', $accountStatuses);
}

You should declare an Interface (ResponseBuilderInterface) to inject it, this way your Controller won't be responsible of injection.

Well, there can be many ways to stop repeating the identical codes. It depends on developer's skills, knowledge and experience. In my case I create A trait file to handel responses.

<?php
namespace App\Http\Traits;
trait ResponseHandler {
public function successResponse($responseKey='data', $data) {
return response()->json([
'error' => false,
'message' => 'OK',
$responseKey => $data
]);
}
public function errorResponse($errorMessage) {
return response()->json([
'error' => true,
'message' => $errorMessage
], 500);
}}

In Your Clientcontroller.php you can use ResponseHandler.php

<?php
use App\Models\AccountStatus;
use App\Models\AccountType;
use App\Models\AlertLevel;
use App\Http\Traits\ResponseHandler;
class ClientController extends Controller
{
use ResponseHandler;
public function getAccountStatuses()
{
try {
$accountStatuses = AccountStatus::all();
return $this->successResponse('account_types', $accountStatuses);
} catch (\Exception $e) {
return $this->errorResponse($e->getMessage() . ' ' . $e->getFile() . ' ' . $e->getLine());
}
}
}

Other ways:

1. Try Repository patterns
2. Try Service Repository Pattern (I personally like this pattern)

You should also try Eloquent: API Resources this can help you to expressively and easily transform your models and model collections into JSON.

There is a JsonResource in Laravel can help you building json response.

Make a JsonResource

php artisan make:resource UserListResource

UserListResource

/**
 * Transform the resource into an array.
 *
 * @return array<string, mixed>
 */
public function toArray(Request $request): array
{
    // Defined your data structure here
    return [
        'users' => $this->resource
    ];
}

Controller

public function __invoke(Request $request)
{
    $users = $this->userService->get(); // Return a Model Collection

    // Success response
    return new UserListResource($users);
}

An simple example for handle error response.

Make error resource

php artisan make:resource ErrorResource

ErrorResource

public function with(Request $request)
{
    return [
        'code'     => 999,  // error code of your system if you need
        'messages' => $this->resource->getMessage()
    ];
}

public function toArray(Request $request): array
{
    return [];
}

After json decode the response should be:

{
'data': [],
'code': 999,
'messages': "error message"
}

Handle exceptions

In app\Exceptions\Handler.php

$this->renderable(function (Throwable $e, $request) {
    if ($request->is('api/*')) { // Ensure exception is during api instead of web
        return (new ExceptionResponse($e))->response()->setStatusCode(500);
    }
});

You can find the document from here.

We can store this function in a trait and use it. Pass on the model name it can any model from which you want fetch data. In your case account_statuses, account_types and alert_levels.

public function getData($model) {
try {
$data = $model::all();
return response()->json([
'error' => false,
'message' => 'OK',
'account_statuses' => $data
]);
} catch (\Exception $e) {
return response()->json([
'error' => true,
'message' => $e->getMessage() . ' ' . $e->getFile() . ' ' . $e->getLine()
], 500);
}
}

For eg :

$accountStatus = getData('AccountStatus');
$accountType = getData('AccountType');
$alertLevels = getData('AlertLevel');