Laravel & PHP: Return special formatted JSON - php

Question

After doing a query, how can I create and echo a formatted JSON like this:
{
"results": [
{
"user_id": "1",
"name": "Apple",
"address": "7538 N LA CHOLLA BLVD",
"city": "Palo Alto",
"state": "CA",
"latlon": [
-111.012654,
32.339807
],
},
{
"user_id": "2",
"name": "Microsoft",
"address": "75 S BWY STE 400",
"city": "Palo Alto",
"state": "CA",
"latlon": [
-73.764497,
41.031858
],
},
],
"meta": {
"page": 1,
"per_page": 10,
"count": 493,
"total_pages": 50
}
}
This is my current query:
public function getAgenciesJson() {
$agencies = DB::table('users')->where('type','a')->orWhere('type','l');
}
Haven't figured out how to output JSON like that, considering I have a "latlon" field like [-111.012654,32.339807], also a "results" tag and a "meta" tag.
Thanks in advance

Answer 1

What you need is something called a transformer (or presenter) to convert your raw model into a format that can be sent to your users.
A very popular package is called Fractal (http://fractal.thephpleague.com/) by Phil Sturgeon. There's a Laravel package, that might make it a bit easier to use, called Larasponse (https://github.com/salebab/larasponse).
Phil actually a blog post about this just the other day - https://philsturgeon.uk/api/2015/05/30/serializing-api-output/ - that goes into why you should always have some kind of transformer between your models and what you send to your users.
There's also a guide about using Larasponse and Fractal that might be of use here - http://laravelista.com/laravel-fractal/.
The gist of it boils down to passing the model through another class that will take the models values and build an array/object in a known/fixed format, e.g. (from Phil's blog post)
return [
'id' => (int) $book->id,
'title' => $book->title,
'year' => (int) $book->yr,
'author' => [
'name' => $book->author_name,
'email' => $book->author_email,
],
'links' => [
[
'rel' => 'self',
'uri' => '/books/'.$book->id,
]
]
];
This way you're not exposing your original field names and if at any point your column names should change you only need to update that in 1 place rather than having to get any user of your JSON to update their site/app. It will also allow you to do string manipulation of your latlon column so that you can split it into 2 different values.
Using a slightly modified example from the Fractal documentation. Say you have a transformer for a User
class UserTransformer extends Fractal\TransformerAbstract
{
public function transform(User $user)
{
return [
'id' => (int) $user->id,
'name' => $user->first_name . ' ' . $user->last_name,
];
}
}
You can then use this class to either transform a single item of a collection
$user = User::find(1);
$resource = new Fractal\Resource\Item($user, new UserTransformer);
// Or transform a collection
// $users = User::all();
// $resource = new Fractal\Resource\Collection($users, new UserTransformer);
// Use a manager to convert the data into an array or json
$json = (new League\Fractal\Manager)->createData($resource)->toJson();
Fractal includes a paginator adapter for Laravel that can be used straight away
$paginator = User::paginate();
$users = $paginator->getCollection();
$resource = new Collection($users, new UserTransformer);
$resource->setPaginator(new IlluminatePaginatorAdapter($paginator));

Answer 2

The method exists:
->toJson()
REF: http://laravel.com/docs/4.2/eloquent#converting-to-arrays-or-json
Update your getAgenciesJson to :
public function getAgenciesJson() {
return DB::table('users')->where('type','a')->orWhere('type','l')->toJson();
}
Then you could echo by:
<?= SomeModel::getAgenciesJson(); ?>
To modify the column names you can update your select. Here is an example taken from the Laravel Docs:
$users = DB::table('users')->select('name as user_name')->get();
Here would be a more fully realized version of what you are looking for minus the column aliases since you didn't really mention what they were.
public function getAgenciesJson($page, $per_page = 10) {
$output = [
'results' => [],
'meta' => [],
];
// Get Results
$output['results'] = DB::table('users')->where('type','a')->orWhere('type','l')->take($per_page)->skip($per_page * ($page - 1))->get();
// Set Meta
$output['meta'] = [
'page' => $page,
'per_page' => $per_page,
'count' => DB::select('SELECT FOUND_ROWS()'),
'total_pages' => DB::table('users')->count() / $per_page
];
// Return
return json_encode($output);
}
Your original code didn't attempt to get or handle the pagination information but this example covers that in order to provide the meta data you indicated you wanted returned.
Not sure if you wanted Count to be the number of the current result set or a count of all the records on that table. If you don't want the current set you but rather the entire count you can use DB::table('users')->count() though I would assign it to a variable and use that rather than calling it twice in the meta info.

Answer 3

public function getAgenciesJson() {
$agencies = DB::table('users')->where('type','a')->orWhere('type','l')->get();
return response()->tojson($agencies,200);//for response with status code 200
}
You should call get function to get data in array format and response function will format your output to json. Second paramater signifies which status code you have to assign for your response.