Laravel 4 - Route::resource vs Route::controller. Which to use?

I understand that a Resource controller can have the following methods

index
show
create
edit
store
update
destroy

Now suppose I have the following actions which need to be performed in addition to the resource actions:

User attempts to log in.
Admin wishes to find a user by email / first-name
User requests a post by it's slug

Are resource controllers useless for the above functionality? If programming an API, I obviously want the index, show, edit,create,destroy... but also the login, find, search etc...

Is it possible to route to both types of controller? e.g.

Route::group(['prefix' => 'api'], function() {
    Route::group(['prefix' => 'v1'], function() {
        // Resource Controller
        Route::resource('posts', 'Api\V1\PostsResourceController');

        // Restful Controller
        Route::controller('posts', 'Api\V1\PostsController');
    });
});

Or should I just forget about the resource controller and use a restful controller instead?

Joseph Silber

Just use a resource controller, add those other methods to that same controller, and add routes to those methods directly:

Route::group(['prefix' => 'api'], function()
{
    Route::group(['prefix' => 'v1', 'namespace' => 'Api\V1'], function()
    {
        // Add as many routes as you need...
        Route::post('login', 'PostsResourceController@login');
        Route::get('find',   'PostsResourceController@find');
        Route::get('search', 'PostsResourceController@search');

        Route::resource('posts', 'PostsResourceController');
    });
});

P.S. I generally shy away from using Route::controller(). It's too ambiguous.

one of the problems associated with resource controllers are when you are using named routes, with group prefixes it all turns out into a big mess . if you want to make a small change in your prefix, you have to make changes throughout the views and controllers . ie you can't make full power of named routes.

i follow this model when developing my laravel apps .

Route::group( [ 'prefix' => 'admin' ], function(){
        Route::resource('pages', 'PageController', [
            'names' => [
                'show' => 'page',
                'edit' => 'page.edit'
            ],
            'only' => [
                'show',
                'edit'
            ]

        ]);

    });

so that i have the following advantages .