Integrating RapidAPI with Laravel Controller - Best Practices

Other Questions RapidAPI
1

I’m working on a Laravel project where I need to consume an external API from RapidAPI. I’ve been trying to use the unirest library but I keep running into issues with class not found errors. I’m wondering if there’s a better way to handle API requests in Laravel or if I’m missing something in my implementation.

Here’s what I have in my controller so far:

public function processData(Request $request)
{
    UserProfile::create(
        request()->validate([
            'first_name' => ['required','max:255'],
            'last_name' => ['required','max:255'],
        ],
        [
            'first_name.required' => 'First name is required',
            'last_name.required' => 'Last name is required'
        ]));

        $headers = array('Accept' => 'application/json');

        $apiResponse = Unirest\Request::post("ENDPOINT_URL",
          array(
            "X-RapidAPI-Key" => "MY_API_KEY"
          )
        );
            dd($apiResponse);

        return view("dashboard");
}

I’m getting this error: Class ‘App\Http\Controllers\Unirest\Request’ not found

Any suggestions on how to fix this or alternative approaches for making API calls in Laravel would be really helpful. Thanks!

2

That namespace error’s pretty common with third-party packages. But honestly, I’d scrap that approach entirely. I’ve done tons of RapidAPI integrations and Guzzle HTTP client beats both Unirest and Laravel’s HTTP facade hands down. You get way more control over error handling and response processing. Just install it via composer: $client = new \GuzzleHttp\Client(); $response = $client->request('POST', 'ENDPOINT_URL', ['headers' => ['X-RapidAPI-Key' => 'YOUR_KEY']]); You can handle timeouts, retries, and different response formats much better. Also, pull that API logic out of your controller and stick it in a dedicated service class. Makes testing way easier and keeps things clean when you’re dealing with external dependencies.

3

That’s a namespace issue. Add use Unirest\Request; at the top of your controller file after the opening PHP tag. But honestly? Ditch Unirest entirely. It’s been deprecated for years. Laravel’s built-in HTTP client (available since Laravel 7) is way cleaner and more reliable. Replace your API call with this:

$response = Http::withHeaders([
    'X-RapidAPI-Key' => 'YOUR_API_KEY',
    'Accept' => 'application/json'
])->post('ENDPOINT_URL', $data);

$apiResponse = $response->json();

Just add use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Http; at the top. Way more maintainable and follows Laravel conventions instead of relying on external libraries for basic HTTP requests.

4

Quick fix: add use Unirest\Request; at the top. But honestly, Unirest’s outdated - I just use curl for RapidAPI calls now. Never fails and no extra dependencies. Something like $ch = curl_init(); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'endpoint'); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, ['X-RapidAPI-Key: yourkey']); then curl_exec($ch). More verbose but rock solid.