Laravel - manually handle HTTP exceptions

Laravel automatically handles HTTP exceptions and throws errors / redirects as it sees fit. Sometimes, this isn’t an ideal behaviour. I was building an API and wanted to display custom messages for missing routes, forbidden and other errors. This can be done like this

Open app\Exceptions\Handler.php
If you want to handle missing models, paste following snippet in render method

if ($exception instanceof ModelNotFoundException) {
        return response()->json([
          'error' => 'Model not found'
        ], 404);
      }

If you’d like to handle other HTTP exceptions, paste the following snippet instead

if ($this->isHttpException($exception)) {
        switch ($exception->getStatusCode()) {

          // not authorized
          case '403':
          return \Response::json([
              'error' => 'You are not allowed to access this'
            ], 403);
          break;

          // not found
          case '404':
            return \Response::json([
              'error' => 'Resource not found'
            ], 404);
          break;

          // internal error
          case '500':
            return \Response::json([
                'error' => 'Something went terribly wrong'
              ], 500);
          break;

          default:
            return $this->renderHttpException($exception);
          break;
        }
      }