Q1: What are API Resources?
Concept: A transformation layer that sits between your Eloquent models and the JSON response returned to the API user.
Benefit: It allows you to format the output, rename keys, cast types, and include relationships conditionally, ensuring your internal database structure isn't exposed directly.
public function toArray($request) {
return [
'id' => $this->id,
'full_name' => $this->first_name . ' ' . $this->last_name,
'email' => $this->email,
];
}Q2: Explain Laravel Sanctum vs Passport.
Sanctum: Lightweight authentication system for SPAs (using cookies) and simple mobile APIs (using tokens). It is the default and recommended for most use cases.
Passport: Full OAuth2 server implementation. Use it only if you need to support third-party clients (like "Login with Google" but for your own app).
Q3: How do you handle API Versioning?
URI Versioning: The most common approach (e.g., /api/v1/users).
Implementation: You can define route groups with prefixes in routes/api.php or separate route files entirely.
Q4: How do you implement Rate Limiting in Laravel?
Mechanism: Laravel uses the RateLimiter facade and middleware to restrict the number of requests a user can make within a given timeframe.
Configuration: Defined in App\Providers\AppServiceProvider (or RouteServiceProvider in older versions).
RateLimiter::for('api', function (Request $request) {
return Limit::perMinute(60)->by($request->user()?->id ?: $request->ip());
});Usage: Apply the throttle:api middleware to your routes.
Q5: How do you document your API?
Tools: The most popular tools are Scribe and L5-Swagger.
Scribe: Generates documentation automatically by analyzing your routes and docblocks. It creates a static HTML page that looks like Stripe's API docs.
Swagger/OpenAPI: Uses annotations in your controller methods to generate an OpenAPI spec file, which can be rendered via Swagger UI.
Q6: How do you handle API Exceptions consistently?
Problem: Default Laravel error pages (HTML) are not suitable for JSON APIs.
Solution: Modify the register method in bootstrap/app.php (Laravel 11) or the Handler.php file (older versions) to intercept exceptions and return JSON responses.
// Laravel 11 bootstrap/app.php
->withExceptions(function (Exceptions $exceptions) {
$exceptions->render(function (NotFoundHttpException $e, Request $request) {
if ($request->is('api/*')) {
return response()->json(['message' => 'Record not found.'], 404);
}
});
})