So we have a load of content within the database, let's call these Articles. The paths for the Articles start from the application root and can contain slashes. So we want to search the DB to see if we match an Article, and if not skip the route and give other routes the opportunity to respond.
In Sinatra (which I believe has inspired the routing within Laravel) you have the option to pass to the next route. It might be this that's leading me astray.
Route::get( '{uri}', function( URI $uri ) {
// check database, if we find a record we'll need to pass it to the appropriate controller
// we'll have a class that handles this responsiblity
// pass if we don't find anything
} )->where('uri', '.*');
Route::get( 'other/page', 'OtherController@sayHello' );
The issue Allow skip the route based on conditions #1899 talks about this, although I can't see how filters cater for this, they will simply intercept and give you an opportunity to stop route execution (throw exception, redirect to route specifically etc.), you can't return FALSE; without error. There is an example chaining a condition method to a route, although this method doesn't seem to exist (in 4.2).
Any ideas?
In addition to this, we're also are thinking about containing this logic within a package so it can be shared across applications, and wonder if you can influence the order of execution of routes provided by package?
You can have a group of routes, which you contain within all the routes that match it. If it fails that group then it skips to the next section.
Route::group(array('before' => 'auth'), function()
{
Route::get('/', function()
{
// Has Auth Filter
});
Route::get('user/profile', function()
{
// Has Auth Filter
});
});