feat: Add watcher option to generate command and allow for options to be specified multiple times

[Tofandel]

This is a very nice backward compatible improvement to the ziggy:generate command

It allows the command to wait until Enter is pressed meanwhile watching for file change to regenerate them, this is very usefull in conjonction with the watch option of webpack or laravel mix as it allows for a development process not requiring manually running commands

Here is an example of usage
php artisan ziggy:generate ./resources/js/Routes/admin.js --group=admin ./resources/js/Routes/public.js --watch

[Tofandel]

This was missing and is required to use json_encode / json_decode in php, even though this extension is usually installed by default in php

[Tofandel]

I added this because I've been struggling for a good hour with this in a WSL2 install while running tests locally

[bakerkretzmar]

@Tofandel I appreciate the work you put into this but I'm going to pass for now. This feature has been suggested before but it's simpler to just run php artisan ziggy:generate when your PHP route files change, or set up a Mix hook as you demonstrated here.

[Tofandel]

Hmm I strongly disagree, the mix hook doesn't have any watchers, without this command modification it has no point at all because the watchers watch the js files and not the php files, so you'd have to restart the server every time you make a route change, I'm already using this and it works really perfectly
Now with a php route name change, the route file update and then mix recompiles without user interaction

It's really not simpler to run a command when you're developing with mix watch, especially when you have multiple files to generate at the same time, with this, you just run mix watch & php artisan ziggy:generate ./resources/js/Routes/admin.js --group=admin ./resources/js/Routes/public.js --watch as an npm script and you're set, any change you make will be instantly reflected on the front

I really can't comprehend why you would turn down a nice feature that eases developer experience. Especially if this was suggested before and I'm serving the PR on a platter with no breaking change and a full set of tests and documentation

[bakerkretzmar]

Happy to explain further. I don't want to reach into Laravel to modify internal properties, reload configurations, reboot the app, etc. It's not a great idea to do stuff like that in general, but it's particularly risky in a package like Ziggy because app developers may not know that that's happening and it could interact with their app and with other packages in unexpected ways. That would have to be removed from this PR. Even without those parts though, it adds a lot of complexity that we'll have to maintain, and I don't think it's worth it for this feature considering that there are other ways to accomplish the same thing.

It's an interesting idea, and I really do appreciate the time you put in to contribute!

Here's an example from an earlier discussion of how to add a watcher to Mix to recompile when a route file changes: #321 (comment).

It could probably be even simpler though:

const { exec } = require('child_process');
const { resolve } = require('path');
const glob = require('glob');

mix.webpackConfig({
    plugins: [
        {
            apply: (compiler) => {
                compiler.hooks.compilation.tap('WatchRoutesPlugin', (compilation) => {
                    glob.sync('./routes/*.php').map(file => compilation.fileDependencies.add(resolve(file)));
                });
                compiler.hooks.afterDone.tap('ZiggyGeneratePlugin', () => {
                    exec('php artisan ziggy:generate');
                });
            }
        },
    ],
});

[Tofandel]

Okay sorry I misunderstood this code

I could modify this PR then, and actually provide a webpack plugin that gives the feature like proposed as I still really would like the multiple arguments part and the not rewriting file if it wasn't modified (as this triggers a useless full recompilation)