Rest Api with Symfony !

Introduction:

Developing a REST API is not an easy task because it’s hard to make changes once it’s released and It takes so much time designing the api.

Case study:

In my study project I have to develop a multi-platform application (a desktop, mobile, and web) So I preferred to use a REST approach to facilitate the work.

Those blog posts helped me to get through the setting up of the API.
Martin flower described the model very well .
Since I am going to use Symofny framework wiliam daurad’s blog post was very helpful.

Pre requires:

The objective here is to create a symfony Bundle inside my application that serves api for Offre (it’s written in French it means Offer) with get and post using symfony2 FOSRestBundle, the NelmioApiDocBundle, the JSMSerializerBundle, and Doctrine.

/*composer.json*/
        "friendsofsymfony/rest-bundle": "1.*",
        "jms/serializer-bundle": "0.13.*",
        "nelmio/api-doc-bundle": "~2.8",

appKerlnel.php

/*appKernel.php*/
            new FOS\RestBundle\FOSRestBundle(),
            new JMS\SerializerBundle\JMSSerializerBundle(),
            new Nelmio\ApiDocBundle\NelmioApiDocBundle(),

###Step 1 :The entity

This is my already implemented Offre entity

 <?php
class Offre
{
    /**
     * @var integer
     *
     * @ORM\Column(name="id", type="integer", nullable=false)
     * @ORM\Id
     * @ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="IDENTITY")
     */
    private $id;

    /**
     * @var string
     *
     * @ORM\Column(name="etat", type="string", length=20, nullable=false)
     */
    private $etat;

    /**
     * @var string
     *
     * @ORM\Column(name="typeImmob", type="string", length=20, nullable=false)
     */
    private $typeimmob;
    /** getters and setters*/
}?>

actually we will not create a form for this entity we don’t recommand this but it is a choice for our project.

###Step 2: Offre Handler

<?php
class offreHandler 
{

    private $om;
    private $offreClass;
    private $repository;

    // ..
    public function __construct(ObjectManager $om, $offreClass)
    {
        $this->om = $om;
        $this->offreClass = $offreClass;
        $this->repository = $this->om->getRepository($this->offreClass);
    
    }
?>

this handler will serve the offres with get($id) to get a single offre and getAll($limit,$offset) for all offres with limit and offset parameters.
post(Request $parameters) to post offres.

<?php
 public function getAll($limit = 5, $offset = 0)
    {
        return $this->repository->findBy(array(), null, $limit, $offset);
    }

 public function get($id)
    {
        return $this->repository->find($id);
    }
 
 public function post(Request $parameters)
    {
        $offre = new Offre(); // factory method create an empty Offre

        return $this->processPost($offre, $parameters, 'POST');
    }

?>

processPost will do every thing, getting the attributes values and returning our offre object. like i said before we didn’t use the Form so we will get this attribute by attribute.

<?php
private function processPost(Offre $offre, Request $request, $method = "POST")
    {
            
            $etat=$request->get('etat');
            $typeimmob=$request->get('typeimmob');
            //we should also do the validation of our attributes
            $offre->setEtat($etat);
            $offre->setTypeimmob($typeimmob);
            $this->om->persist($offre);
            $this->om->flush($offre);
            return $offre;
    }
?>

###Step 3 :The Controller

now after implementing our handler our work is to call those methodes in our offreController

<?
  public function getOffresAction(Request $request, ParamFetcherInterface $paramFetcher)
    {
        $offset = $paramFetcher->get('offset');
        $offset = null == $offset ? 0 : $offset;
        $limit = $paramFetcher->get('limit');

       $entities= $this->container
        ->get('rest.offre.handler')
        ->getAll($limit, $offset);

        $view = $this->view($entities, 200)
          ->setTemplate("sprint2restBundle:Default:index.html.twig")
          ->setTemplateVar('entities') ;

        return $this->handleView($view);
    }
?>

what is rest.offre.handler ??
rest.offre.handler is a service it will help us to access the handler and use its functionality wherever you need.

Service Container:

 <parameters>
        
        <parameter key="rest.offre.handler.class">sprint2\restBundle\Handler\offreHandler</parameter>
</parameters>
 <services>
        <service id="rest.offre.handler" class="%rest.offre.handler.class%">
            <argument type="service" id="doctrine.orm.entity_manager" />
            <argument>%rest.offre.class%</argument>
        </service> 
</services>

for more documentation for the service container here the official symfony article
now let our api speak , we will use nemlio for that.

<?
    /**
     * Get All Offres,
     *
     * @ApiDoc(
     *   resource = true,
     *   description = "Gets All offres ",
     *   
     *   statusCodes = {
     *     200 = "Returned when successful",
     *    
     *   }
     * )
     *
     *@Annotations\View(templateVar="entities")
     *@Annotations\QueryParam(name="offset", requirements="\d+", nullable=true, description="Offset from which to start listing offres.")
     *@Annotations\QueryParam(name="limit", requirements="\d+", default="5", description="How many offres to return.")
     * 
     * 
     *
     * @param Request               $request      the request object
     * @param ParamFetcherInterface $paramFetcher param fetcher service
     *
     * 
     * @return array
     **/
    public function getOffresAction(Request $request, ParamFetcherInterface $paramFetcher){...}
    ?>

before going further we should see our work is going in the right direction , this is the routing.yml

sprint2rest_getOffres:
    type: rest
    prefix: /v1
    resource: sprint2\restBundle\Controller\offreRestController

this should generate a route for us /v1/offres.{_format} to see this hit app/console router:debug | grep v1 you could access the api with curl -s or you can download chrome extension for rest api client or simply you can use the http command http localhost:8000/v1/offres.json

##The result:

debuging the router:

getting the result with http

Documentation: doc doc1