Laravel Markdown Response Laravel Package

title: Customize request detection weight: 3

The built-in detector handles most cases, but you can fine-tune which detection methods are active or replace the detector entirely.

Toggle detection methods

You can enable or disable individual detection methods in the config:

// config/markdown-response.php

'detection' => [
    'detect_via_accept_header' => true,
    'detect_via_md_suffix' => true,
    'detect_via_user_agents' => [
        'GPTBot',
        'ClaudeBot',
        // ...
    ],
],

Set detect_via_user_agents to an empty array to disable user agent detection.

Extend the detector

If you need more control, you can extend the DetectsMarkdownRequest class and point to it in the config:

// config/markdown-response.php

'detection' => [
    'detector' => App\Actions\CustomDetectsMarkdownRequest::class,
],

namespace App\Actions;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Spatie\MarkdownResponse\Actions\DetectsMarkdownRequest;

class CustomDetectsMarkdownRequest extends DetectsMarkdownRequest
{
    public function __invoke(Request $request): false|string
    {
        // Only respond with markdown for specific paths
        if (! str_starts_with($request->getPathInfo(), '/docs')) {
            return false;
        }

        return parent::__invoke($request);
    }
}

The returned string tells the middleware how to handle the request:

• 'suffix': the middleware strips .md from the URL before routing
• 'accept': the middleware temporarily swaps the Accept header to text/html
• 'user-agent': the middleware lets the request pass through normally