Formal way to send an HTTP body in PHP? - php

I'm writing my own Response class in PHP (as an exercise) in order to simplify the setting of headers and output. Currently, I'm using header() to send out HTTP headers after the request has been built but I'm not sure how to send the body. Do you just use print and echo? Or is there some a formal method?

You can use The HttpFoundation Component
A Response object holds all the information that needs to be sent back to the client from a given request. The constructor takes up to three arguments: the response content, the status code, and an array of HTTP headers:
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
$response = new Response(
'Content',
Response::HTTP_OK,
array('content-type' => 'text/html')
);

As far as I know echo is the way to go. However, it is a best practice to separate your logic and design. A good way to do this is by using two php files for 1 page (for example pagelogic.php and layout.php).

Related

What's the right way to handle chunked json response with swagger and autogenerated php client?

I'm a bit lost between definitions, generated code and many things that are a bit of a black box, even after debugging.
But let's start at the beginning. I have an API written with node using NestJS as framework. NestJS automatically creates the swagger/openapi json file. Using swagger-codegen I create a PHP class to access the API from another server. Works like a charm for simple API request.
Now the problem are API request returning a bigger response, i.e. >1000 rows from one or more DBs. Do make the client not wait a long time and create a big JSON response on the server I've switched to NDJSON, which splits the reponse in chunks of smaller JSON parts, each on it's own line. This also works when I create my request by hand with curl or a HTTP wrapper in PHP using fopen and fread. The response type is application/x-ndjson.
But the code generated by swagger-codegen is always waiting until the whole response has been received. It's even worse, because it fails to decode NDJSON with json_decode() and just returns null. Underneath Guzzle is used, which uses PSR7 streams for the response.
Now I could just skip the autogenerated code for the NDJSON endpoints. But I'd prefer not to add special handling and lose all the useful generated checks.
So is it somehow possible to make swagger-codegen give access to the stream of the response? Am I missing a parameter to codegen or something in the swagger JSON? It does have a produce with application/x-ndjson.
Do answer my own question it is possible, but not easily - meaning there is no option or parameter.
First create a class that extends the autogenerated API class. There you have access to all of the protected methods. We assume the endpoint or api method is called testMethodGet. The only thing that can be reused is the request method, i.e. testMethodGetRequest, but it does all of the client side validation and transforming of input data, so that's already a big win. Do also get some of the boilerplate result validation you can copy the "http info method", i.e. testMethodGetWithHttpInfo (use async version if you wish). Remove the if/else block after $responseBody = $response->getBody(); and in the return replace the ObjectSearializer line with just $responseBody.
What you are now getting back is the body as PSR7 stream, but there is one last catch. By default the whole response is drained into a temporary file. To really stream the result body from the server in the created method add an option to $options: $options['stream'] = true; Now the method returns as soon as the body is started. No need to wait for the whole body content.
One more thing. As the result is a PSR7 stream you can use $stream->detach() to get the PHP stream resource if you prefer to use the normal file and stream methods.

Symfony | Authenticate request

I'm trying to create a "service" like application, which can be able to receive API calls from another services. (These services will be built, for different purposes). And also able to send API calls to an another one.
Each request that they send, and accept has to have the following format.
{
header : {
// some header information, like locale, currency code etc.
signature : "some-hashed-data-using-the-whole-request"
},
request : {
// the usable business data
}
}
To each request I want to append a hash, that is generated from the actual request or anyhow (salted with password or any kind of magic added). Its not that important at the moment. I gave the name signature to this field. So for each received request, I want to reproduce this signature from the request. If the signature I received is matching with the one I generated, I let the application run otherwise showing some error message.
I already read a few articles, but most of them is for user-pass combinations.
My question is not about that if it's a good solution or not. I just want to know how can implement a middleware like functionality - like in laravel - in Symfony 4?
Instead of putting headers into a JSON object the HTTP body, use HTTP headers directly. That’s what they are for. When you’re using non-standard headers, prefix them with X- and maybe a prefix for your application, for example X-YourApp-Signature. The request goes into the body, i.e. the value of the request property in your example.
The server side is pretty simple with Symfony:
public function someAction(Request $request)
{
$signature = $request->headers->get("X-YourApp-Signature");
$data = json_decode($request->getContent());
// ... go on processing the received values (validation etc.)
}
If you want to write a HTTP client application in PHP, I would recommend using the Guzzle library. Here’s an example:
$headers = ["X-YourApp-Signature" => "your_signature_string"];
$data = json_encode(["foo" => "bar"]);
$request = new \GuzzleHttp\Psr7\Request("POST", "https://example.com", $headers, $data);
$client = new \GuzzleHttp\Client();
$response = $client->send($request, ["timeout" => 10]);
var_dump($response);
Of course, you’ll also want to implement some error handling etc. (HTTP status >= 400), so the code will be a bit more complex in a real application.
As k0pernikus mentioned, the before after filters solves my issue.

laravel 4 why send content-type when sending json?

In the book of laravel I read, and also my co-worker who has experience with laravel said that generating JSON I should in laravel way.
Why do I need to do this:
Route::get('markdown/response', function()
{
$data = array('iron', 'man', 'rocks');
return Response::json($data);
});
As I read it sends also content-type header when using this.
When I was using codeigniter I used to do simply this:
echo json_endode($data);
and never ever ever had any problems. Even if it is not set content type. Actually I dont know maybe php sets it automatically, but since I did not have problems, I did not care.
And when using 'new' technology I really want to know why it is better than good old one.
With respect, by not providing a content-type header, you were doing it "wrong" when coding in CodeIgniter.
Most clients (browsers, ajax requests, especially jQuery) can still can guess how to handle the response correctly and so probably "just worked" for you. You were likely always implicitly returning a Content-Type: text/html with your response, which is a default header in CodeIgniter.
You should always return a proper content type with your HTTP responses so the consuming client knows how to treat this content. Note that this is a mechanism of HTTP as defined in specification, not specific to any framework or even a language.
Response::json()
The above code is just a convenience function, where Laravel will automatically set the application/json header for you, as well as convert an array of data into JSON format. The only effective difference from your CodeIgniter code is the setting of the header, as you've pointed out.
It's worth noting that the Response object extends Symfony's response object, which is very "powerful" - in other words, it's a very good implementation of the HTTP protocol.
The response object returned from Response::json (and other Response static methods) are highly modifiable.
$response = Response::json($data);
$response->header('Content-Type', 'application/json');
return $response;
You can check for more available methods in the Laravel and Symfony code API.
http://laravel.com/api/class-Illuminate.Http.Response.html
http://api.symfony.com/2.1/Symfony/Component/HttpFoundation/Response.html
Just because it worked doesn't mean it wasn't wrong. JSON isn't HTML, so text/html is an inaccurate Content-Type for it.
Sending the correct header means libraries like jQuery understand what sort of data they're getting back, and thus are able to handle it on their own without guidance. Browsers may also do things like pretty-printing the JSON data or making it otherwise easier to read.
Depends what you are trying to do with the route. if you only want to return json data you can just return json_encode($data) and that will work, To actually return a json response for use with something like an ajax request you need the headers set properly or the accepting route just thinks its getting a string. Response::json is for setting the response which sets the headers appropriately.

slim php (explanation of "request body" documentation)

I am working with Slim PHP for the first time and I am trying to understand one of the concepts. In the slim PHP documentation, it states:
Request Body
Use the request object’s getBody() method to fetch the raw HTTP request body sent by the HTTP client. This is particularly useful for Slim application’s that consume JSON or XML requests.
<?php
$request = $app->request();
$body = $request->getBody();
My question is, what is "the raw HTTP request body"? Is it just a string of all the HTML in the body of the page? What format is it stored as? What would echo $body look like? If I do var_dump($body) I get string(0)"". How do I use it?
I'll just make it an answer rather than comment...
Raw request data is what's submitted from the browser as a body of the POST request.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POST_%28HTTP%29#Use_for_submitting_web_forms
Technically it can be used to read the data from usual html forms, but this doesn't make much sense as PHP does this good enough and places everything into $_POST.
You may need to read raw data if you have some javascript that sends XML or JSON data, which is not natively accepted by PHP.
The terms you ask for are defined in the RFC2616: Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1.
For example, in particular what a Message (Request/Response) Body is: 4.3 Message Body.
If those RFCs are new to you, grab that one an read it from top to bottom and try to understand as much as possible. You'll start to see how those things in the internet work.
Also there is version 2.0 is in the pipe with some changes:
Hypertext Transfer Protocol version 2.0 (Draft 04)
Just in case you're interested.

Determine REST POST/PUT request format

I'm developing a REST CodeIgniter Controller and need to POST and PUT to a URL in multiple formats.
The main formats I can think of would be:
XML
JSON
HTML Form data
There will be a response format defined in the URI e.g. /format/xml or /format/csv.
I don't want to have to define the request format in the URI as well.
I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions on finding out the request format so my script can complete the request.
I'm thinking it may be possible to get this data from the request headers "content-type"?
"content-type: text/xml" = XML
"content-type: application/json" = JSON
"content-type: text/plain" = HTLM Form data **i think!*
Would this method be robust or are there better approaches out there?
Thanks.
The content-type is the correct way to get the information you want.
Just make sure to throw an exception with some feedback and the correct http error code if the client calls it on the wrong format or do not pass the content-type header (you could also assume one content-type as default)
Also, you don't really have to use format/format_of_the_response . A better way would be to use the header Accept on the same way you use the header content-type
That method is robust as long as you know the your REST client will follow your content-type rule. If you control the client then this is fine. If you don't control the client then how acceptable is failure of the call when an unusual (or no) content-type is passed in?
Oh and for reference HTML form data has a content type of 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'
I know this has been answered, but Phil Sturgeon wrote a REST Client and REST Server Library for codeigniter, might help you out a little bit.
http://github.com/philsturgeon/codeigniter-restclient

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