I am pretty new with this. I am trying to develop some android application in Qt/Qml to query and update data to a database.
The problem I'm trying to solve:
There is a server with a MySQL database. The android application request some data. I use a very very basic php file that query in the database, format an XML and show that file starting with a header('Content-type: text/xml'); sentence, then some echo "<...>" sentences. This php file receives parameters via $_GET array and performs the query.
This is a little archaic but works fine. My client application use Qt/QML for android. It uses XmlListModel to obtain the data from the server and show that data in a ListView.
So far so good, but here is my real problem:
The user of the android application can change some data, and the modified data must be sent back to the server, who performs an update in the database.
My first attempt was to create another php file and send the data in the URI, get it via $_GET and perform the update to the database. This works but there could be many variables and the URI will become very large. I think might be better to send an XML (or JSON) from the client to the server, and put in that file the data for the update.
So, this is the question: How can I send an XML file from Qt/QML to the server? How does the php file obtain that data? Or maybe there is another, better way for doing this.
Every example I find just shows the server-to-client part, or is written in Java, and I don't know java enough.
Additional notes:
After I can solve this I will fight with security: SSL, avoiding SQL injection or anything, but that will be in another question if necessary.
I didn't use SOAP or similar because the first ideas was simple. Also, I have never used SOAP before. If this is the right way, I would be very grateful if you show me how to use it from Qt/QML in android.
Of course, I can use C++ for the client application since it is using Qt.
I use Qt since I already know it and the app might be useful in desktop as well.
Sorry if I made any english mistake.
Thank you in advance.
I've been reading a few REST tutorials and some of them says that in order to send data to a rest API you should send post data as an array, which is something like this:
$data = array('foo' => 'bar');
$rest->post($data);
Then there are others that say you should send JSON data like this:
$data = array('foo' => 'bar');
$data = json_encode($data);
$rest->post($data);
Not sure if there's a standard way of doing this or either if is fine but what is generally recommended when designing API's?
EDIT: There seems to be confusion. To clarify I agree JSON should be used for client consumption but this question is about SERVER consumption. Meaning should the SERVER accept JSON or POST data from its clients?
If you're the one creating the RESTful API, meaning your application is the server and is accepting requests, then your question seems confusing. Your application will not be sending any POST data; clients will be sending POST data to you.
With that being said, having an API which will accept JSON-encoded requests is possible, though would really only be useful for very niche scenarios. The vast majority of clients will be POSTing data to your API in the application/x-www-form-urlencoded format. PHP handles this behind the scenes for you, and exposes the data as the $_POST superglobal.
If you're talking about responding to POST requests, and what format you should use, then that will depend on what format the client wants you to send it in. The client will either specify this in the Accept header, or some APIs allow it to be specified in the URL (e.g. foo.com/some/thing/123.json or foo.com/some/thing/123/json). The client isn't required to tell your application what format it wants, so it's up to you to pick a sensible default. Most APIs will use JSON these days.
I've never heard of an API that understood serialized PHP array format, though, so I don't know what resources you've been reading, but I'm pretty sure you misunderstood what they were suggesting.
Actually, I think this is a pretty good question. don't know why it got downvoted.
Also, contrary to what I saw written in some comments, the client can use any language he wants, not only javascript. And it's not the server job to know which language was used to "build" the request, just that the request is valid. This makes more sense if you think that the entity making the request can actually be another server (think about a proxy server used to send post requests across domains).
That being said, personally, I think it's better for the server side to consume a XML or JSON. The main reason is validation.
It's easier to validate a XML or JSON against a schema.
Also the schema can be made public, and a well designed schema can describe webservice by itself. The client can even use the same schema to validate the request prior to sending it to the server.
Passing an url encoded form is also valid, of course. And can be validated server side as well. SO i think, down the road, it's just a matter of preference.
Also, check this discussion in SO, it regards the same topic:
JSON vs Form POST
You should think about the clients that will consume the API. A HTML5\AJAX client will probably want JSON data, while other clients (Silverlight or native mobile apps) might be better at consuming XML.
One great framework\platform for writing REST API's is looking to be Microsoft's Web API (based on ASP.NET MVC). The product succeeds the WCF framework and allows users to write REST API's in a MVC environment. One feature is that it chooses a serialization provider based on the HTTP Accept header.
So if a client Accepts application/json they work with the service in JSON and if the accept XML they work with the service in XML. You can also write your own object serializer and plug it into the framework.
More information: http://www.asp.net/web-api/overview/getting-started-with-aspnet-web-api/video-your-first-web-api
Most of the time you would want to stick to receiving POST data but I think receiving json data does have its uses for example when it comes to batch requests.
The Facebook API uses it.
You don't need to do file_get_contents('php//input'). From the facebook documentation you could just do something like this:
curl -X POST "http://example.com/batch" -d 'batch={ "param" : 1, "param2" : "2"}'
Then in the PHP code, if you're using PHP, you can get it through the $_POST parameter and do a json_decode.
var_dump($_POST);
array(1) {
["batch"]=>
string(30) "{ "param" : 1, "param2" : "2"}"
}
var_dump(json_decode($_POST['batch'], true));
array(2) {
["param"]=>
int(1)
["param2"]=>
string(1) "2"
}
JSON makes more sense, since it is language-independent and can be useful when API scales.
I am currently developing a REST API and I was asking myself the same question. After some research I found out that is no standard and is totally up to you.
You are developing the server side so you can decide how data should be sent to you. The client need to adapt to your design.
Personally I choose to receive all POST and PUT data as JSON directly in body.
The point is to reuse the HTTP implementation that already exists.
HTTP is built to accept many different content-types and you only need to specify which you are using in the headers.
A REST API that accepts the various formats and works off the content-type header is refreshing. You can submit x-www-form-urlencoded values from an HTML webpage or make an AJAX request with raw JSON and there is no confusion as long as everyone is following protocol.
As a developer you must choose the support your app will provide because you can't support everything. Typically it boils down to the support or convenience of your own environment -- nobody wants to reinvent the wheel.
Many frameworks that are designed with building APIs in mind, handle the most popular content types at a lower level. They may also encode the response data according to the "Accept" header.
Implement whatever you think will be used most first or find a framework that already speaks HTTP and takes care of all of that for you.
I have spent the past three days researching this... but Im still stuck.
I have a service provider that offers me a REST api. I need to:
Get the data from his api
Assign the data to variables in php
Write the data to my localhost sql database.
All that's required is the API KEY which has been provided to me.
Please could someone explain to me what method I should use to call and store the data in php.
Writing to the Database and handling the data once in php format is not a problem.
Thanks in advance
Since you want to consume a webservice you would have to make HTTP request using PHP.
There is many ways to do that but the most used(IMHO) is cURL. cURL function would allow you to easily make HTTP request and consume data from the webservice.
Here's my situation:
I've successfully created a simple PHP webservice to pull data from MySQL. I've got an HTML page with jQuery making an AJAX call to that webservice. The PHP returns XML, which the jQuery parses and displays on success. Pretty standard stuff here.
I've done a lot of research on securing the XML during transit to the HTML page. I'm not passing sensitive info, however I don't like the idea that the info is just out there for the taking during transit. I was considering making all the calls using https and securing the webservice folder. Does anyone know if this is enough to secure the data? I feel like it should be...
Also, this type of webservice could eventually be consumed by an iPhone APP, if that has any bearing on the response or direction of answers here. Thoughts? Thanks for reading.
If your users need to authenticate when using the webservice and this is done over https and transmitting the xml is done over https as well. That part of the transmission is secure and can not be sniffed.
If you connect to your mysql server on a private network or block external access to the mysql server as well then all should be secure (insecure scripting not taken into consideration)
I Developed a REST Service in Jax-RS, and I have some functions that use the POST method, like:
Auth_User()
Get_List()
Insert_Data(id,name,data)
I need to access these functions using PHP cURL. What I basically need is to work the functions from the PHP files, so that my REST Service can work like Facebook App development.
how can I do this using cURL?
You can use the CURL library with it's wide range of options to perform GET/POST/HEAD etc. requests that you would need to communicate with your REST server.
As for parsing data, you would have to take a look at either json_decode() if you get json objects back, or e.g. SimpleXml if you need to parse it as XML.
See this site here for a decent example of querying the yahoo REST api in php/curl:
http://developer.yahoo.com/php/tutorials/water_bug_tutorial-making_rest_request.html
There is no such thing as a REST server. The question you are asking is "How do I make an HTTP request from PHP?" What technology the server is implemented with is absolutely irrelevant. At least it should be!