Responses and Redirects

Use the response() helper to build HTTP responses.

JSON

return response()->json([
    'status' => 'success',
    'data' => $data,
], 200);

HTML

return response()->html('<h1>Hello</h1>', 200);

Status and headers

return response()
    ->status(201)
    ->header('X-App-Version', '1.0')
    ->json(['message' => 'Created'], 201);

Multiple headers can be added with headers().

Local redirects

Normal redirects are intentionally local:

return response()->redirect()->to('/dashboard');

to() rejects absolute and scheme-relative URLs (http://, https://, //). This makes user-provided redirect targets safer by default.

External redirects

Use away() explicitly for an external destination:

return response()
    ->redirect()
    ->away('https://example.com');

Redirect back

return response()
    ->redirect()
    ->back('/');

Bhitti uses the referer only when it belongs to the same host as BASE_URL; otherwise it uses the fallback.

Flash data with a redirect

return response()
    ->redirect()
    ->with([
        'success' => 'Profile updated.',
    ])
    ->to('/profile');

with() stores the array in the current session under the flash key. The application-level flash() helper reads and consumes flash messages.