Laravel Repositories

Question

What are the advantages of Repositories in Laravel? It seems to be abstracting the Model layer from the business logic of the application. Although it really just seems to m

Answer 1

Repositories, like in the provided tutorial, aren't necessary a Laravel concept. Rather, they're a form of IoC injection that is possible with Laravel. Any object that might similarly be injected doesn't mean it's a repository. See the video for a good example from Taylor Otwell, which happens to use a "repository" as well: http://vimeo.com/53029232.

In this example, the repository abstracts where the data came from that is passed to the controller. As long as the data passed implements the specified interface, the controller can "blissfully" make use of the interface's defined methods without worry about where the data initially came from. This allows switching the initial source of the data without breaking your controller. You could pull the data from a file, a database, an outside API, a mock object, or just some arbitrary array. Basically, the controller doesn't need to gather the data represented by the repository. It can just receive and use.