Laravel optional prefix routes with regexp

Question

Is there a way to create routes with prefixes so I can have routes like this

/articles.html -> goes to listing  Controller in default language
/en/articles.html -> goes to the same controller
/fr/articles.html -> goes to the same controller

My current problem is that by doing:

Route::group(['prefix=>'/{$lang?}/',function(){});

a route like this: /authors/author-100.html will match a prefix 'authors` , and for sure there is no language called "authors".

I use laravel 5.5

Answer 1

Another working solution would be to create an array of langs and loop over it:

$langs = ['en', 'fr', ''];

foreach($langs as $lang) {
  Route::get($lang . "/articles", "SomeController@someMethod");
}

For sure this makes your route file less readable, however you may use php artisan route:list to clearly list your routes.