README

Find the route you need without repeatedly running route:list. Open the explorer, type part of a URI, name, controller, method, middleware, or domain, and watch the matching routes update immediately. Press Enter to inspect a route, then Escape to continue searching.

An additional Artisan developer tool. Laravel's built-in route:list remains available and unchanged.

Installation

The Composer package is toufiqakki/laravel-artisan-route-explorer. Once published:

composer require toufiqakki/laravel-artisan-route-explorer --dev

Laravel discovers the service provider automatically. No configuration, migrations, or publishing commands are needed.

To install this source before publication, add a Composer path repository in a Laravel application, replacing the path with your local package checkout:

composer config repositories.route-explorer path /absolute/path/to/laravel-route-explorer
composer require toufiqakki/laravel-artisan-route-explorer:@dev --dev

Usage

php artisan route:search
# Alias:
php artisan route:explore
# Start with a query:
php artisan route:search users

All routes appear immediately. Type to search without pressing Enter. Matching letters appear in yellow, including fuzzy matches. A blue background and › mark the selected row. A context line explains matches in fields hidden from the table, such as middleware or domain.

Enter opens a scrollable details view with full methods, URI, name, action, controller, declared middleware, resolved middleware, domain, and parameter names. Escape returns to the same search and selection. Closing the explorer restores your previous terminal screen.

Features

Instant, case-insensitive search across URI, route name, HTTP methods, controller/action, middleware, and domain.
Predictable ranking: exact field matches, prefixes, substrings, then ordered fuzzy subsequences.
Matched-letter highlighting, including in long, truncated fields.
Keyboard navigation, paging, and route inspection within one session.
Controller middleware and middleware groups, with Laravel's middleware exclusions respected.
Web, API, closure, resource, invokable, domain, unnamed, and multi-method routes.
Responsive columns and scrolling for large route collections.
In-memory searching: routes are collected and normalized once per command.
Plain table and JSON output for scripts and terminals without interactive support.

Matching and ranking

For example, usrctrl matches UserController, and auth can match a route name, action, declared alias such as auth:sanctum, or a resolved middleware class. Exact matches against individual HTTP methods and middleware also receive first priority.

Fuzzy matching starts at three characters. Characters must appear in order within one field. Ties prefer fewer skipped characters, then an earlier match, then the original route registration order. Duplicate-looking routes are retained. Search text is a single phrase; spaces do not introduce an expression language. Interactive queries are limited to 256 characters.

Use --no-fuzzy for strict substring searching:

php artisan route:search users --no-fuzzy

Filters

Filters reduce the dataset before opening the browser and remain active when Escape clears the query. Filters combine with AND. Repeated methods combine with OR, matching complete HTTP methods; all other filters use case-insensitive substrings.

php artisan route:search --method=POST
php artisan route:search --method=PUT --method=PATCH
php artisan route:search --middleware=auth --path=api
php artisan route:search --name=users --domain=api.example.com

Noninteractive use

php artisan route:search users --plain
php artisan route:search --method=GET --json
php artisan route:search auth --no-interaction

Piped output, --no-interaction, --no-ansi, native Windows, and TERM=dumb automatically use a plain table. Quiet/silent mode exits without opening a hidden interactive session. --json outputs an array of route objects and takes precedence over --plain. No matches produce [] and a successful exit status. Neither mode reads keyboard input. Set NO_COLOR to disable highlighting while retaining the interactive browser.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Key	Route list	Details
Typing	Update search immediately	Ignored
Backspace	Remove the last character	Ignored
↑ / ↓	Previous / next result	Scroll
Ctrl+P / Ctrl+N	Previous / next result	Scroll
Page Up / Page Down	Move one page	Scroll one page
Home / End	First / last result	Top / bottom
Enter	Inspect selected route	Stay in details
Esc	Clear the search	Return to the list
Ctrl+C / Ctrl+D	Exit	Exit

j and k are search characters. Query editing appends at the end; left/right cursor editing is not currently implemented. Keyboard shortcuts are displayed in both views.

Screenshots / Demo

Laravel Route Explorer
Search: users_
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Methods       URI                  Name             Action
› GET|HEAD      users                users.index      UserController…
  POST          users                users.store      UserController…
  GET|HEAD      users/{user}         users.show       UserController…

3/120 routes · Selected 1/3
↑↓ Move · Enter Details · Esc Clear
PgUp/PgDn · Home/End · Ctrl+C Exit

Requirements

Laravel	PHP
12.x	8.2–8.5
13.x	8.3–8.5

Composer 2 and ext-mbstring.
Laravel Prompts 0.3.24 or later in the 0.3 series, installed automatically by Composer.
For interactive mode: Linux, macOS, or Windows through WSL; a UTF-8 ANSI terminal; stty and PHP process functions enabled.
A terminal of at least 36 columns × 11 rows. Below that size a resize hint is shown. Roughly 100 columns shows all primary table columns; details remain available in narrower windows.

The route snapshot reflects the booted application, including vendor routes and cached routes. Routes are never executed. Gathering legacy controller middleware may construct controllers through Laravel's container, as Laravel's own route inspection does. If controller middleware cannot be collected, the route remains available with a metadata warning. Global HTTP middleware, source file locations, and parameter binding implementations are not included. Group aliases are retained alongside a separate resolved middleware list.

Architecture

Laravel Router → RouteCollector → immutable RouteEntry[]
                                    ↓
                               RouteFilter
                                    ↓
                       RouteSearcher + RouteMatcher
                                    ↓
                    ranked SearchResult[] + highlights
                                    ↓
               ExplorerState → RouteListView / RouteDetailView
                                    ↓
                        Laravel Prompts adapter

The command coordinates discovery, filtering, output mode, and the interactive session. Searching is independent of Laravel's output and terminal rendering. Normalized fields are indexed once. Search results contain character positions so the view does not implement matching a second time. RouteMatcher can be replaced using a container binding.

The UI extends Laravel Prompts for TTY setup, input, and cursor restoration. A small adapter splits buffered input, polls for resizing, and repaints an alternate screen. It avoids the inline prompt renderer's clipping when terminals shrink. No additional runtime TUI library is required. Sorting, export formats, or alternative UIs can be added without replacing route discovery.

Testing

From this package's directory:

composer install
composer test
composer format
composer benchmark

PHPUnit and Orchestra Testbench test discovery, normalization, middleware, search ranking, highlighting, 5,000-route datasets, keyboard state, terminal sizing, JSON output, and command registration. The included GitHub Actions workflow targets Laravel 12 and 13 across their PHP versions when this package is the repository root.

On Linux or macOS, also run the real terminal integration test (Python 3 standard library only):

python3 tests/terminal_smoke.py

It checks live input without Enter, ANSI highlighting, paging, details, literal console markup, pasted input, idle resizing, empty results, Ctrl+C, and restoration of the terminal mode, cursor, and prior screen. The benchmark reports timings rather than asserting a hardware-dependent latency threshold.

Contributing

Open an issue describing the use case or bug. For a change, keep discovery, matching, and rendering separate; add focused regression tests; run the tests and formatter; and describe the behavior and validation in your pull request. Keep new runtime dependencies small and justify them.

Before the first public release, choose an available Composer vendor namespace, update the installation examples, publish this package directory as the repository root, and tag the release. Do not publish the surrounding development application. Packagist installation becomes available after registering that repository.

License

MIT.

toufiqakki / laravel-artisan-route-explorer

Package info

Security

Statistics