How to organize different versioned REST API controllers in Laravel 4?

Question

I know there's a way to create versioned URLs for REST APIs with routes, but what's the best way to organize controllers and controller files? I want to be able to create new versions of APIs, and still keep the old ones running for at least some time.

Answer 1

I ended up using namespaces and directories under app/controllers:

/app
  /controllers
    /Api
      /v1
        /UserController.php
      /v2
        /UserController.php

And in UserController.php files I set the namespace accordingly:

namespace Api\v1;

or

namespace Api\v2;

Then in my routes I did something like this:

Route::group(['prefix' => 'api/v1'], function () {
  Route::get('user',      'Api\v1\UserController@index');
  Route::get('user/{id}', 'Api\v1\UserController@show');
});

Route::group(['prefix' => 'api/v2'], function () {
  Route::get('user',      'Api\v2\UserController@index');
  Route::get('user/{id}', 'Api\v2\UserController@show');
});

I'm not positive this is the best solution. However, it has allowed versioning of the controllers in a way that they do not interfere with each other. You could probably do something verify similar with the models if needed.