Examples of different response types that can be sent back using the Response facade in Laravel 4 - www.slashnode.com

responses.php

<?php 

// send back some HTML, rendered from a template
return Response::view('users.index', array(
  'name' => 'Steve Brule',
  'title' => 'Brule\'s Rules',
));

// send back some json
return Response::json(array(
  'name' => 'Steve Brule', 
  'title' => 'Brule\'s Rules'
));

// send back a file
return Response::download(app_path('public/stevens-file.txt'));