php 28 lines · 5 steps

How a soft-delete restore endpoint works in Laravel

A single-action controller authorizes, guards, and undeletes a soft-deleted Article.

Explained by highlit
Laravel Intermediate soft-deletes authorization single-action-controller route-model-binding json-api
1<?php
2 
3namespace App\Http\Controllers;
4 
5use App\Models\Article;
6use Illuminate\Http\JsonResponse;
7use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Gate;
8 
9class ArticleRestoreController extends Controller
10{
11 public function __invoke(Article $article): JsonResponse
12 {
13 Gate::authorize('restore', $article);
14 
15 if (! $article->trashed()) {
16 return response()->json([
17 'message' => 'Article is not deleted.',
18 ], 409);
19 }
20 
21 $article->restore();
22 
23 return response()->json([
24 'message' => 'Article restored.',
25 'data' => $article->fresh(),
26 ]);
27 }
28}
01 / 01
STEP 01

Walkthrough

Space play ←→ step click any line
Three takeaways
  1. 1Route model binding lets the framework resolve and inject the target record before your logic runs.
  2. 2Checking trashed state before restoring turns an invalid action into a clear 409 instead of a silent no-op.
  3. 3Returning fresh model data confirms the mutation actually took effect in the response.

Related explainers

php 
<?php
 
class NameParser
{

Parsing a full name into components in PHP

string-parsing arrays normalization
Intermediate 8 steps
php 
<?php
 
namespace App\Services\Checkout;
 

Validating coupons with Laravel's Pipeline

pipeline chain of responsibility transactions
Intermediate 7 steps
php 
<?php
 
namespace App\Services;
 

How a password strength validator works in PHP

validation regular-expressions data-driven
Intermediate 8 steps
php 
<?php
 
namespace App\Services;
 

Building a cached daily leaderboard in Laravel

caching aggregation eager-loading
Intermediate 9 steps
php 
<?php
 
final class RotatingFileLogger
{

How a rotating file logger works in PHP

logging file-rotation io
Intermediate 9 steps
go 
package middleware
 
import (
	"net/http"

Per-plan export limits in Gin middleware

middleware rate-limiting authorization
Intermediate 7 steps

Share this explainer

Here's the card — post it anywhere.

How a soft-delete restore endpoint works in Laravel — share card
Made with highlit — turn any snippet into a walkthrough like this in about a minute.
Explain your code