How to call other function from the same controller in Laravel application?

Question

I'm very new to Laravel and I was given a Laravel project, where I need to add some new features. The person, who has previously worked on that project hadn't left even a single comment in the code and now I must make my own scenarios about the features. I have a controller, defined with some functions (dashboard, show_project, save_project etc.) and in one of my function, I need to use the result of calling other function.

In the concrete example, the call is made from " http://127.0.0.1:8000/username/project_slug " - there is a button "Save" and post function, called on onClick event.The function, whose output I need is normally called on " http://127.0.0.1:8000/username/project_slug/svg ", which returns a view.

For better understanding, there's an example of the flow:
The user wants to save his/her project (an UML diagram) but in order to have a thumbnail, a function which generates a view (SVG format) will be called and the idea is, to take the HTML content of the page, which is on " http://127.0.0.1:8000/username/project_slug/svg " and to pass it to another API in order an image to be generated.

So far, I tried with cURL , file_get_contents , file_get_html , render methods but when I return the output, the server just keeps waiting and shows no error messages.

//The both functions are in ProjectController.php

/**
 * A function, for saving the json file, where the whole of the diagram 
 * components are described. From the frontend we receive the project_id and  
 * the project_data(the json content).
 */
public function save_project(Request $request) {
        $input = $request->only(['project_id', 'project_data']);

        /*
          Here we need to call the other function, to render the HTML content
          and to pass it to the other API. Then we save the result with the
          other information.
        */

        /*
          What I've tried?
          $new_link = 'http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . "/$username" 
                                              ."/$project_slug" . "/svg";
          $contents = file_get_contents($new_link);
          return $contents;
        */

        //In the same way with cURL.

        $project = Project::where('user_id',session('userid'))
                          ->where('id',$input['project_id'])->first();
        $project->project_data = json_encode($input['project_data']);
        if($project->save()) {
            return ["status"=>"saved"];
        }
        else {
            return ["status"=>"error"];
        }
    }

/**
 * A function, which takes the the Json content (project_data) from the 
 * database and passes it to the view, where the Json is transformed in HTML 
 * tags. 
 */
public function generate_svg(Request $request,$username,$project_slug) {
        if(session('username')!=$username) {
            return redirect("/");
        }

        $userid = session('userid');

        $project = Project::where([
            'user_id' => $userid,
            'slug' => $project_slug,
        ])->first();

        if(!is_null($project)) {
            return view('svg',compact('project'));        
        }
    }

I've read about some possible ways, including Guzzle request but maybe I haven't understood correctly the idea:

If I need to make a Guzzle request from my controller to the other function inside my controller, do I need an API configuration?

What I mean? Example: Before saving the project, the user is on this URL address " http://127.0.0.1:8000/hristo/16test ". Inside the controller, I have in session variables the token, the username(hristo) and i can get the project_name(16test) from the URL but after passing this URL to the generate_svg function, there is no indication of error or success.

So I'm missing some kind of token information?

Answer 1

If you just need the response of the other function you can just use

$response = $this->generate_svg($request, $username, $project_slug);

If you'll need to use this function from a different controller you can use this

app('App\Http\Controllers\UsernameController')->generate_svg($request, $username, $project_slug);