Laravel create/show Route Doesn’t Work? A Typical Mistake.

If you have a few similar GET routes, there’s a danger of one overriding another.

Example 1: Two GET Routes

routes/web.php:

Route::get('posts/{post}', [PostController::class, 'show']);
Route::get('posts/create', [PostController::class, 'create']);

The problem with this pair is that “create” will match the same way as {post}, so if you load /posts/create in the browser, it will execute the first route of /posts/{post}, assigning {post} == "create".

In that case, you need to change the order:

routes/web.php:

Route::get('posts/create', [PostController::class, 'create']);
Route::get('posts/{post}', [PostController::class, 'show']);

Then, both routes would start working.

Example 2: Resource Controller with Extra Method

routes/web.php:

Route::resource('posts', PostController::class);
Route::get('posts/export', [PostController::class, 'export']);

If you launch /posts/export in the browser, it will instead execute the show() method of the Controller, and not the export() method.

The reason: as a part of Resource Controller, there’s a show() method, which has a signature of posts/{post}. So it will match the same way as posts/export.

If you want to add extra methods to Resource Controller, you need to add them before the Route::resource():

routes/web.php:

Route::get('posts/export', [PostController::class, 'export']);
Route::resource('posts', PostController::class);

The general rule of thumb is to have specific no-parameter routes earlier in the Routes file than the “wildcard” routes with parameters.