I'm currently designing a new web application based on Symfony Framework that will serve both web and mobile accesses. For illustration purposes I will use the default AcmeDemoBundle from Symfony`s framework to elaborate my question.
So, DemoBundle gives me the following route:
/hello/{name}
So far so good. Now, I want to implement an API in this project that will serve mobile apps, so the route for the same controller as the route above whould be, for instance:
/api/v1/hello/{name}
My doubt is: what's the best way of doing that without replicating code? I intend to use the FOSRestBundle for the API and I know that he handles rendering HTML views to, but I'd like to separate the API routes from the web as I put before. Maybe should I create a new bundle for the API?
Create a bundle for the API is not a good practice for the simple reason that you can't easily re-use the bundle in an other project.
For example, you create PostBundle and his API bundle, APIPostBundle for your A project.
If you want to use that bundle for a B project, you need PostBundle and APIPostBundle. You created dependency between two bundles and it's a bad practice (Component-Based Development).
So, you have to generate an independency bundle with a strength architecture who can allow you less modification if you have to.
Use a service for the logical instructions. Then, the controller/APIController can manage the route and will call the service methods. By that way, you can just modify the service without editing the controllers.
So, your architecture looks like that:
PostBundle
Controller
- PostController
- APIPostController
Service
- PostService
- PostServiceInterface
Related
I recently started learning PHP and Symfony 4 and I developed an app. Now my next task is to change the architecture of the project, from MVC to client-server. More exactly, I need to have my templates and controllers in an application and the business logic in another application. Any ideas how I can do this? I can't even figure out how to run 2 different symfony projects simultaneously.
A client-server application is an application base on a communication model call client-server: wiki
MVC is a way to develop and structure application: wiki
But i understand your needs. You want to keep a symfony app but you also want to put all the logic view and front end features into a separate app (like React or Vue)
Your Symfony App will still use MVC pattern, just you'll replace what the controller give to the view.
The best way is to turn the Symfony App into API with normalize view data like JSON or XML. Those data will feed your front app.
To achieve this you can use this bundle, which turn your model layers into API: API Platform
I have an existing Zend Framework 2 project. Now I've been experimenting and considering rebuilding the front end to be entirely AngularJS, as opposed to the now with Zend Framework 2 MvC coupled layouts and views. But for that reason, the models and controller with their respective routes exist and they use services that have a lot of business logic.
If I were to add an API to this existing project through Apigility, say, for external third parties to be able to access account information, how am I supposed to do that without interfering with my current controller routes?
Apigility Admin UI automaticly creates routes appending the base url (www.domain.com/[api url]). This does not directly conflict when I have an AccountController with /account routes and an API route that uses /accounts/[:accountId] but mistakes are bound to happen.
I should use a url like api.domain.com, however Apigility Admin UI adds the routes automaticly and has, as far as I have seen, no option to create a subdomain route through subdomain 'api'. Of course I could modify the automaticly generated routes every time I make changes through Admin UI but that seems like a hassle and prone to error.
While spreading my question around for an answer, someone on the #apigility IRC channel was friendly enough to give me an answer.
I was overthinking this, as dualmon mentioned in the comments. I had thought Apigilty Admin UI was a tool for managing the whole API. nuxwin^ on IRC told me that while Apigility Admin UI does automate routes for you which can be configured with a base url, it's still only meant for development time. It would mean if I were to route my subdomain to a module I could do that after developing the API.
Simple solution, I just had been overthinking that tool demanded me to follow a certain path.
I have an application which is developed in Symfony2. Now the structure for it is as follows:
FrontBundle - includes everything related to the application's view and UI.
PersistanceBundle - includes everything related to the persistence layer of the application.
DomainBundle - includes everything related to the entities of the application and the services.
Is this structure ok? Or bundles are used like forum feature - ForumBundle - which includes every layer (controllers, services, domain logic and persistence) related to the forum.
There are no hard and fast rules on how to structure your app using bundles, but here's what I came to after developing on Symfony2 for close to a year.
Use one app specific bundle. At first, I started with multiple bundles like CommonBundle, UserBundle, MainBundle, BlogBundle, ContactBundle, etc. That proved to be not so convenient in the end, so I switched to just one app specific bundle — AppBundle.
You can organize your code neatly using subnamespaces. For example, the backend controllers would go to the AppBundle\Controller\Backend subnamespace.
Note that I'm talking about one app specific bundle — that stuff that's unique to the concrete app and won't make sense to reuse elsewhere. You can still develop separate bundles for reusable stuff and put them into the vendors infrastructure.
Keep non Symfony specific stuff out of bundles. There is no need to have a bundle for the model and the Service Layer classes in a bundle if they are not Symfony2 specific. See this question and my answer for further details.
Like Elnur said, use one AppBundle is a good practice.
A single bundle implements the MVC pattern himself so i think it's not a good idea to use bundles to separate your layers.
I think the best way to use bundles is to think "open source". If the feature you are developping is enough generic to be released for everyone, or to be reused in a future project, place this feature in a bundle.
This way will force you to build the feature without any business rule which belong in your AppBundle.
Bundles are bricks
There are different ways to organise application structure for your projects. But if you want to distribute your bundles and follow symfony best practices, then bundles are more features than separation of UI. More about bundles read in documentation.
I have two projects with the following structures, both valid I think:
making a bundle for each feature: BlogBundle, StoreBundle and so on,
and AppBundle that contains general stuff. No Backend/Frontend
separation. It's SaaS where backend is frontend in most cases.
One bundle for frontend, one for backend. They share only entities
and domain specific stuff. The application has two different ends.
I have a web application which has been developed with symfony 1.4. I have a pretty large code base (and growing). Circa 80,000 lines of code (actions, forms, models, templates etc.)
I'm using the default doctrine version which ships with symfony 1.4.
I've just started developing a mobile version using Sencha touch. I don't wish to use symfony for the REST web services because:
REST services in Symfony 1.4 is not great. For example, If i want a PUT request I have to pass a 'sf_method' parameter specifiying that the request method is PUT. This isn't true REST and it's not ideal for Sencha touch.
I don't need all of the unnecessary symfony functionality(for example the plugins that are autoloaded in the ProjectConfiguration file, the form framework etc.) that you'd use to develop a standard web app. All I need is to define my REST routes and return the specified JSON (as everything that needs to be returned for Sencha touch will be JSON)
I want to keep my mobile app as bloated-free, efficient and quick as possible. And unfortunately for this task, Symfony 1.4 would not be the best choice for using as the backend architecture for my mobile app. If I had chosen symfony2 (it was in it's beta phase, alas) it would be a different story as symfony2 supports true REST functionality. What I do need, however, is the ability to use my current doctrine models (I have circa 90 models) in a chosen REST framework.
Basically, in a nutshell what I need is as simple as this:
Call a rest route->Query my doctrine models->return the JSON without using symfony.
So my question, what would be your advice? I don't want this to be a question of which is the best PHP rest framework, however, what I would like to know is what would be a good REST framework which i can develop efficiently and quickly REST service, make use of my doctrine models and is easily extendable.
Here at my employer, I've created a rather big application with a ExtJS frontend, and Symfony 1.4 backend. And two be honest, I don't feel limited by Symfony 1.4 in any way?
First of: I created my own base controller class (which extends sfActions). This controller can handle (render) different types of data. It has generic handling for Doctrine_Query, Doctrine_Collection, Doctrine_Model and array types.
Also the plugins make me help organize the code, and in some cases plugins are shared between differend projects, so that's also a big plus.
And the extra functionality like forms: it's only prepared for you in the autoloader, you don't have to use it. And I don't think it causes any real performance issues (at least not for me). But I like to use the extra sfValidator framework, to make sure data are correct.
The only real "problem" is indeed the HTTP REST-ful commands, especially PUT and DELETE. I just worked around this problem by generating a controller for each 'manageable' model, and implement specific get, list, create, update and delete actions. So when I would like to manage an Object, I call the objects controller, which has executeCreate, executeUpdate and executeDelete actions.
The reason I read, was that Symfony didn't and couldn't implement this feature because PHP has really bad support this. I don't know if this is true, but if this is your only 'real' issue, you could try to fix this in the Symfony core.
So my advice:
If the raw performance is your problem: try profiling your code, install a opcode (APC) cache, and profile your code (yes, that's double).
If the HTTP PUT command is your problem: I would either work around this (that's the way I solved it), or try to fix it in the core.
I am embarking on creating a Yii project that basically has a shared data model (let's say CerealStuff) with a front-end web site (call it site), admin site admin, and web service ws. I am new to the whole MVC thing and I wanted to know how I should design this project to stay consistent with Yii/MVC best practices. So far I have identified two basic options:
Create models CerealStuff at root, create three modules site, admin, and ws each with their own controllers;
Create models CerealStuff at root, create two modules admin and public with public containing controllers that handle Site and have #soap declarations to handle ws stuff.
I know that option 2 reduces the total amount of reproduced coding but it does not feel as clean quite honestly. Also I feel like maybe a modern web app should be such that even the "site" (view) uses the web service to access the database.
Tell me what to think!
I'm exposing a simple web service in my app, and I went with a separate (soap) controller.
If you follow the fat model / skinny controller paradigm, it's pretty simple to tack on a web service front end to your models.
Edit: better example of fat models: http://www.therailsway.com/2007/6/1/railsconf-recap-skinny-controllers
Read this article to see an example of MVC structured Yii project with two entrance points for front-end and back-end. Once learned this you can add another entrance point easily for ws.
As you can see all models are shared between modules. Controllers, config files and views are separate. Views can be configured as shared as well. I used this type of structure in many projects and never had any issues with extending or scaling.