Milind Daraniya

Creating a sitemap is crucial for search engine optimization (SEO) as it helps search engines discover and index the pages of your website. In Laravel 10, you can generate a sitemap without relying on any external plugins. In this tutorial, we'll guide you through the process of generating a sitemap in Laravel 10 using a product module as an example. Let's dive in!

Please follow below steps to generate custom sitemap in Laravel 10.

Step 1: Set Up Routes and Controller 
First, create the necessary routes and a controller to handle the sitemap generation. Open the routes/web.php file and define a route that points to the controller method. For example:

use App\Http\Controllers\SitemapController;

Route::get('/sitemap.xml', [SitemapController::class, 'generateSitemap']);

Next, create the SitemapController using the command php artisan make:controller SitemapController. Open the newly created SitemapController.php file and add the following code:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Response;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\URL;

class SitemapController extends Controller
{
    public function generateSitemap()
    {
        // Initialize XML string
        $xml = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>';
        $xml .= '<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">';

        // Generate sitemap URLs dynamically
        $products = \App\Models\Product::all();
        foreach ($products as $product) {
            $xml .= '<url>';
            $xml .= '<loc>' . URL::to('/product/' . $product->id) . '</loc>';
            $xml .= '<lastmod>' . $product->updated_at->tz('UTC')->toAtomString() . '</lastmod>';
            $xml .= '<changefreq>daily</changefreq>';
            $xml .= '<priority>0.8</priority>';
            $xml .= '</url>';
        }

        $xml .= '</urlset>';

        // Return the XML response
        return Response::make($xml, 200, [
            'Content-Type' => 'application/xml',
        ]);
    }
}

Step 2: Generate Sitemap Route 
To generate the sitemap, we need to create a custom Artisan command. Open the app/Console/Commands directory and create a new file named GenerateSitemap.php. Add the following code to the file:

<?php

namespace App\Console\Commands;

use Illuminate\Console\Command;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\URL;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\File;

class GenerateSitemap extends Command
{
    protected $signature = 'sitemap:generate';
    protected $description = 'Generate the sitemap';

    public function handle()
    {
        // Initialize XML string
        $xml = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>';
        $xml .= '<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">';

        // Generate sitemap URLs dynamically
        $products = \App\Models\Product::all();
        foreach ($products as $product) {
            $xml .= '<url>';
            $xml .= '<loc>' . URL::to('/product/' . $product->id) . '</loc>';
            $xml .= '<lastmod>' . $product->updated_at->tz('UTC')->toAtomString() . '</lastmod>';
            $xml .= '<changefreq>daily</changefreq>';
            $xml .= '<priority>0.8</priority>';
            $xml .= '</url>';
        }

        $xml .= '</urlset>';

        // Save the XML to the sitemap.xml file
        File::put(public_path('sitemap.xml'), $xml);

        $this->info('Sitemap generated successfully.');
    }
}

Step 3: Register the Sitemap Command 
To make the sitemap:generate command accessible, we need to register it in the app/Console/Kernel.php file. Open the file and add the following code to the commands property:

protected $commands = [
    Commands\GenerateSitemap::class,
];

Step 4: Generate the Sitemap 
To generate the sitemap, simply run the command php artisan sitemap:generate in your terminal. This will generate the sitemap XML file in the public directory of your Laravel project.

Note : Remember to adjust the code according to your specific database structure and requirements.