How can a Laravel package filter all requests and redirect if necessary?

Question

I would like to build a package for Laravel 4 that checks for some specific parameters and redirects the request to another url if needed.

Is there a best way to do that?

I would prefer to have the package able to simply be dropped in and configured without having to modify the filters or routes files in the base Laravel install.

Answer 1

How to do it simply put:

You can do a pre request processing by registering before application events to for a global filtering of responses sake like so:

App::before(function($request)
{
    //
});

You have to register it in one of your start files or in a service provider.

---

Package recommended for study:

I strongly recommend you to delve into Laravel-Hooks, a Laravel 4 package by Chuck Heintzelman.

You should focus on the app/start/onbefore.php hook, executed as global app "before" filters.

Excerpt:

/**
 * Set up before listener if found
 */
protected function registerOnBefore()
{
    $file = $this->hookName('onbefore');
    if ($file)
    {
        $this->app->before(function ($request) use ($file)
        {
            $result = static::load($this->app, $file, compact('request'));
            if ($result !== 1)
            {
                return $result;
            }
        });
    }
}

Stripped from Laravel-Hooks/src/Heintzelman/LaravelHooks/LaravelHooksServiceProvider.php.

Don't forget to share your findings :-)