Refactoring a Laravel Controller to Reuse Shared AppBaseController Response Helpers

A developer describes refactoring a Laravel MenuCategoryController that returned hand-built JSON responses instead of following the project's established conventions. The original controller extended Laravel's default Controller, which led to inconsistent response formats across the codebase. The fix was to switch the controller to extend the existing AppBaseController, which provides sendResponse, sendError, and sendSuccess helpers. The article notes that sendResponse and sendSuccess produce different JSON structures, so the underlying ResponseUtil methods should be checked before assuming output formats. The refactor preserves resource-based responses and proper HTTP status codes while keeping shared behavior in the parent class.