Laravel 5 get command response

Question

I think I understand the concept of command in Laravel, in that it's a good place to put reuseable code, that can be called from controllers and the like, but I have a query:

Can I return a value back to the calling method from a command? For example, I have a controller method which creates a user in Active Directory, for which there is a command to do this. If the AD server is unreachable, I want to return a response back to the calling controller method. Is this possible?

It only shows in the documentation how to call a command using dispatch(), but nothing as to whether it can return anything.

And if you cannot return a value, can someone explain the reasoning behind why you wouldn't want to return a value? I know that queued commands may take a while and wouldn't be appropriate to wait for a response, but for commands that should be executed immediately I don't see why you wouldn't want to return a value.

Any help or advice is appreciated.

Answer 1

In the context of the command bus, yes you can return values on non-queued commands. In your command handler method, simply return what you want:

public function handle(){
    return 'foobar';
}

And save the result of your dispatch command to a variable:

 $my_command_result = $this->dispatch(
    new MyCommand();
);

Answer 2

Commands are not for storing reusable code in controllers. Theyre getting renamed to jobs in 5.1 and their main purpose it to work as Cron Jobs. If you have a method to create a user and want to use it in many places, you could store it in the User model.