How to change default Yii 2 Rest API GET response result - php

Question

According to Yii 2 Rest APi documentation, I have a CountriesCountry that extends \yii\rest\ActiveController and a corresponding Countries model. This is the code for my Controller class.
<?php
namespace app\controllers;
class CountriesController extends \yii\rest\ActiveController{
public $modelClass = 'app\models\Countries';
public function actionIndex(){
}
public function actionView(){
}
public function actionCreate(){
}
public function actionUpdate(){
}
public function actionDelete(){
}
public function actionOptions(){
}
}
When I send a get request, it returns all the countries in my database.
My Question
is it possible to return my own result from action methods. Like in the actionIndex(), I will like to limit the result to 20 records. I did something like this but it is not working.
public function actionIndex(){
$model = Countries::find()->limit(20);
print_r($model);
}
I know that I can get all the countries from by database and loop through it and obtain only 20 results but I want to just query for 20 records from database.

Answer 1

Your class CountriesController that extends from \yii\rest\ActiveController automatically supports GET, PUT, POST calls etc. No need for actionIndex(), actionCreate(), etc if you just want regular REST functionality. Read about it in the Yii2 guide.
To limit the results you could just set another page size in your controllers afterAction-method. Add this to your controller. (I believe that 20 records is default of Pagination class, so if that is what you want you don't need this code at all. Just use the default functionality of yii/rest/ActiveController.)
public function afterAction($action, $result) {
if (isset($result->pagination) && ($result->pagination !== false)) {
$result->pagination->setPageSize(100);
}
return parent::afterAction($action, $result);
}

Answer 2

Suppose your api link is:
http://localhost/yii2-rest/api/country/?limit=15&order=id
Controller:
public function actionIndex(){
$model = Countries::find()
->orderBy($_GET['order'])
->limit($_GET['limit'])
->all();
return $model;
}
Take care about security!
You can get query string this way:
$limit = Yii::app()->getRequest()->getQuery('limit');

Answer 3

Straightway
//SELECT * FROM countries LIMIT 20
$countries= Countries::find()->limit(20)->all();