Building a REST API with Laravel from Scratch

A REST API lets other apps (a mobile app, a React frontend, or a third-party service) talk to yours. In this part we build a simple product API: list, create, and delete.

Setting up the routes

Laravel ships with Route::apiResource, which registers every CRUD route at once. Add this to routes/api.php:

Route::apiResource('products', ProductController::class);

Writing the controller

The controller simply returns models. Laravel turns them into JSON for you.

public function index()
{
  return Product::latest()->paginate(20);
}

Next steps

The API is still open to anyone. In the next part we add token authentication so only registered users can create products.