Exercise - Defining Multiple Routes

Defining multiple routes

To define multiple routes for our Laravel app, we add multiple Route::get() function calls to our web.php file. Each function call specifies a different path. Add the following code to the web.php file:

Route::get('/', function () {
    return ('This is the base URL.');
});

Route::get('/about', function () {
    return ('This is the About Us page.');
});

Route::get('/contact', function () {
    return ('This is the Contact Us page.');
});

Accessing different routes in browser

To access the base route on a local server, we enter the http://127.0.0.1:8000 or http://localhost:8000 address in our browser. This address is connected with the following response containing our simple string:

To access the about page of our app (on a local server), we enter the http://127.0.0.1:8000/about or http://localhost:8000/about address in our browser and observe a different response string:

And finally, since we also defined a third route called /contact, we can access this Contact Us page through the http://127.0.0.1:8000/contact or the http://localhost:8000/contact address in our browser. The browser renders the server's response which contains the previously defined string for this particular route.

Explanation

Each Route::get() function call defines a separate route and specifies a different string response for that route.

The first route definition

The first function call defines the root path '/' and a response string for this path:

Route::get('/', function () {
    return ('This is the base URL.');
});

The second route definition - the About Us page

To define another route, for example, the About Us page accessible at the /about path, we add another Route::get() statement to our web.php file, with a different path and a different response string:

Route::get('/about', function () {
    return ('This is the About Us page.');
});

The third route definition - the Contact Us page

To add, for example, the Contact Us page which will be accessible at the /contact path, we add the following code:

Route::get('/contact', function () {
    return ('This is the Contact Us page.');
});

Each Route::get() function call defines a separate route/path and connects this route with a code to be executed. The code is a callable that simply returns a string for a particular path.

The complete content of the web.php file now looks like the following:

<?php

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Route; // import the Route facade

Route::get('/', function () {  // define a base route
    return ('This is the base URL.');  // and return a string for this route
});

Route::get('/about', function () {  // define the about path/route
    return ('This is the About Us page.');  // and return a string for this route
});

Route::get('/contact', function () {  // define the contact path/route
    return ('This is the Contact Us page.');  // and return a string for this route
});

In our next exercise, instead of returning a simple string, we will return a view containing the HTML code from a template file.