Check if a user is a subscriber and display X route else display Y route

Question

In my project, I have a route to display topics that looks like this.

Route::get('/voting-topics', [PublicTopicController::class, 'index'])->name('public-topics');

The voting topics page show a list of topic pulled from my DB where they are marked as public.

The issue I'm facing is I also want to display a full list of topics for subscribers.

Currently, I'm using this route for subscribers

Route::group(['middleware' => ['subscriber']], function () {
    Route::get('/dashboard/topics', [MemberTopicController::class, 'topics'])->name('dashboard.topics');
});

I don't think this is the best way, I'd prefer to have all the topics on /topics and but only show the public ones for none subscribers.

I guess my question is, is there a way to check in my route if a user is a subscriber and do something like this.

if( subscriber()->user() ) {
    Route::post('/topics', [TopicController::class, 'index'])->name('topics');
} else {
    Route::post('/topics', [TopicController::class, 'publicTopic'])->name('topics');
}

Answer 1

Instead of declaring two different routes, I would declare a single route and I would decide in the controller what to do, based on the subscriber status.

Something like:

Route::get('/topics', [TopicController::class, 'topics'])->name('topics');

in your controller:

public function topics() {
    if (subscriber()->user()) {
        return $this->subscriberTopics();
    } else {
        return $this->publicTopics();
    }
}


private function publicTopics() {
// public topics stuff
}

private function subscriberTopics() {
// subscriber topics stuff
}