Base controller for Laravel 4.0 that lets you use the new instance filter functionality from 4.1

laravel4basecontroller.php

<?php

class BaseController extends Controller {

	/**
	 * Setup the layout used by the controller.
	 *
	 * @return void
	 */
	protected function setupLayout()
	{
		if ( ! is_null($this->layout))
		{
			$this->layout = View::make($this->layout);
		}
	}

	/**
	 * Prepare a filter and return the options.
	 *
	 * @param  string  $filter
	 * @param  array   $options
	 * @return array
	 */
	protected function prepareFilter($filter, $options)
	{
		// When the given filter is a Closure, we will store it off in an array of the
		// callback filters, keyed off the object hash of these Closures and we can
		// easily retrieve it if a filter is determined to apply to this request.
		if ($filter instanceof Closure)
		{
			$options['run'] = $hash = spl_object_hash($filter);

			$this->callbackFilters[$hash] = $filter;
		}
		elseif ($this->isInstanceFilter($filter))
		{
			$options['run'] = $filter;
			$this->callbackFilters[$filter] = $this->makeInstanceFilter($filter);
		}
		else
		{
			$options['run'] = $filter;
		}

		return $options;
	}

	/**
	 * Check if a filter is a local method
	 * @param  mixed  $filter
	 * @return boolean
	 */
	protected function isInstanceFilter($filter)
	{
		return is_string($filter) and starts_with($filter, '@');
	}

	/**
	 * Create a callable from a local filter name
	 * @param  string $filter
	 * @return Closure
	 */
	protected function makeInstanceFilter($filter)
	{
		$filter = substr($filter, 1);
		$controller = $this;

		return array($controller, $filter);
	}
}