Route Parameters Issues

[mawuli-agbenyo-creator]

Laravel Version

12.10.2

PHP Version

8.2

Database Driver & Version

No response

Description

I'm not sure if this is a bug or if I just don't fully understand how it works.

I'm having an issue related to Laravel route parameters.

I have the following two routes defined:

Route::get('/users/{id}', [UserController::class, 'getUserById']);
Route::get('/users/discover', [UserController::class, 'discover']);

The problem is with the route hierarchy. When I try to access /users/discover, it ends up calling the getUserById method instead, as if discover is being treated as an {id}.

Is this expected behavior?

Steps To Reproduce

[Tantrisse]

Hey,
If I remember correctly, routes are parsed in order so Route::get('/users/{id}', [UserController::class, 'getUserById']); is tried first. Because {id} is a parameter without any constraints, it matches anything after /users/ so the word discover is captured and passed to getUserById.

You should always place routes without parameters (or with stricter parameters constraints) first.
In your case, it's as simple as swapping these two routes 😊

See https://laravel.com/docs/12.x/controllers#restful-supplementing-resource-controllers for a good explanation on route precedence.

[DanielCHood]

Rather than relying on ordering of your routes, you should try to make your route definitions as accurate as possible. If {id} is always expected to be a number then it should be defined as such (Route::get('/users/{id}', [UserController::class, 'getUserById'])->where('id', '[0-9]+');. Then there isn't any conflict between string arguments.

With your current definition, any thing after users/ matches the definition and tries using that route so it's trying to treat discover as an $id.

[crynobone]

Thanks @DanielCHood and @Tantrisse