Laravel: a simple MVC example

Question

I'm new to Laravel and the documentation's basic task list returns Views from the Route(web.php) but I want to use a Controller to return an image file.

So I have for my route:

Route::get('/products', 'ProductController@index');

Then my ProductController action (please ignore comments as I'm using index to simplify things):

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use App\Product;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;

class ProductController extends Controller
{
    /**
     * Display a listing of the resource.
     *
     @return \Illuminate\Http\Response
     Fetch and return all product records.
     */
    public function index()
    {
        //
        //return response()->json(Product::all(), 200);
        return view('/pages/product', compact('product'));

    }

And my product.blade.php (nested in views/pages/product):

<img src="/images/product/Frozen_Ophelia_800x.png">

I keep getting a ReflectionException Class App\Product does not exist.

I got this working when I just returned a view from the route. I'm getting a ReflectionException Class App\Product does not exist so I think it's something at the top, ie. use App\Product; that is wrong.

Edit (below is my App\Product nested in app/Providers):

<?php

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\SoftDeletes;

class Product extends Model
{
    //
    use SoftDeletes

    protected $fillable = [
        'name', 'price', 'units', 'description', 'image'
    ];

    public function orders(){
        return $this->hasMany(Order::class);
    }
}

Answer 1

Assuming App\Product model exists, correct code should be:

public function index() {
    $product = Product::all();
    return view('pages.product', compact('product'));
}

Check the docs.

PS did you call a $ composer dumpautoload? ReflectionException Class error is often related to new class autoloading (eg. new classes in a packages)

Answer 2

view function should have any view template not any url or route. Of you have file views/pages/product.blade.php then use

   view('pages.product',compact('product'));