Should paginated data's JSON responses be consistent?

[thtg88]

Currently using Laravel 7.12.0 there's a few ways of returning a JSON response within a controller, from paginated data coming from a LengthAwarePaginator, but they all seem to return different JSON responses/content.

Assuming I'm paginating User models:

1. Using the response helper method

return response()->json(User::paginate());

Returns something along the lines of:

{
  "current_page":1,
  "data": [{"id": 2, "name": "Marco"}],
  "first_page_url": "http:\/\/localhost\/v1\/users\/paginate?page=1",
  "from": 1,
  "last_page": 1,
  "last_page_url": "http:\/\/localhost\/v1\/users\/paginate?page=1",
  "next_page_url": null, 
  "path": "http:\/\/localhost\/v1\/users\/paginate",
  "per_page": 10,
  "prev_page_url": null,
  "to": 3,
  "total": 3
}

2. Using an API resource collection (standard out of a make:resource UserCollection) with the response helper method:

return response()->json(new UserCollection(User::paginate()));

// or - equivalent result
return response()->json(UserResource::collection(User::paginate()));

Returns exclusively the data part a.k.a. just the collection part of the paginator:

[{"id": 2, "name": "Marco"}]

3. Finally returning just the collection (without the response() call):

return new UserCollection(User::paginate());

Returns data similar to the first example, but wrapped a bit further:

{
  "data": [
    {
      "id": 2,
      "name": "Marco"
    }
  ],
  "links": {
    "first": "http:\/\/localhost\/v1\/users\/paginate?page=1",
    "last": "http:\/\/localhost\/v1\/users\/paginate?page=1",
    "prev": null,
    "next": null
  },
  "meta": {
    "current_page": 1,
    "from": 1,
    "last_page": 1,
    "path": "http:\/\/localhost\/v1\/users\/paginate",
    "per_page": 10,
    "to": 3,
    "total": 3
  }
}

While 2 it's kinda understandable - you can override the behaviour by customizing the toArray method in the collection, 1 and 3 look very similar: both ways detect a paginator properly and add the same meta-data on top of it, but in a slightly different structure, and both ways "know" they are getting returned within a JSON response, so it really feels like they should be the same.

What do you think?

Happy to submit an issue with this, or a reproduction case/repo if you want me to :)