Restful API for CakePHP 2 - php

Question

I am creating a Restful WebService with CakePHP 2 however, i am getting 500 Internal Server Error since i am not able to capture Post Data. The Rest Server is as below:
App::import ( 'Vendor', 'ExchangeFunctions', array ('file'=> 'exchange/exchangefunctions.php'));
class ExchangeController extends AppController
{
public $components = array('RequestHandler');
public
function index()
{
$exchange = new ExchangeFunctions();
$data = $this->request->data('json_decode');
$exchange->username = $_POST['username'];
$exchange->password = $_POST['password'];
$emailList = $exchange->listEmails();
$response = new stdClass();
$response->emailList = $emailList;
foreach($emailList->messages as $listid => $email)
{
$tempEmail = $exchange->getEmailContent(
$email->Id,
$email->ChangeKey,
TRUE,
$_POST['attachmentPath']
);
$response->emails[$tempEmail['attachmentCode']] = $tempEmail;
}
$this->set('response', $response);
$this->set('_serialize','response');
}
}
and the client goes as:
class ApitestController extends AppController
{
Public function index()
{
$this->layout = 'ajax';
$jRequestURLPrefix = 'http://localhost/EWSApi/';
$postUrl = $jRequestURLPrefix."exchange/index.json";
$postData = array(
'username' => 'username',
'password' => 'password',
'attachmentPath'=> $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . $this->base . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'emailDownloads' . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'attachments'
);
$postData = json_encode($postData);
pr($postData);
$ch = curl_init( $postUrl );
$options = array(
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER=> true,
CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => array(
'Content-Type: application/json',
'Content-Length: ' . strlen($postData)
),
CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => 'GET',
CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => $postData,
);
curl_setopt_array( $ch, $options );
$jsonString = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$data = json_decode($jsonString, FALSE);
echo $jsonString;
}
}
Not sure where i am messing up! Please help!

Answer 1

Ok, after a second look there are some more suspicious things. As already mentioned, your CURL request uses GET instead of POST.
$options = array(
...
CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => 'POST',
CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => $postData,
);
Another thing is that you are encoding the POST data for your CURL call to JSON, but then you are trying to access it on the other side using $_POST, however there won't be anything, POST data would have to be key/value query string formatted in order to appear in $_POST. You have to read php://input instead, which may be what you were trying to do with
$data = $this->request->data('json_decode');
However you must use CakeRequest::input() for that purpose, and of course you must then use the $data variable instead of $_POST
$data = $this->request->input('json_decode');
$exchange->username = $data['username'];
$exchange->password = $data['password'];
....
$tempEmail = $exchange->getEmailContent(
$email->Id,
$email->ChangeKey,
TRUE,
$data['attachmentPath']
);
Also make double sure that your CURL request looks like expected:
$options = array(
...
CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => $postData,
CURLINFO_HEADER_OUT => true // supported as of PHP 5.1.3
);
curl_setopt_array($ch, $options);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
$info = curl_getinfo($ch);
curl_close($ch);
echo '<pre>';
print_r($info);
echo '</pre>';