Different behaviour with and without Symfony's response system - php

I'd like to be able to manage WebDAV directories (and even reimplement the way files are read and written) in Symfony. To do so I found SabreDAV, which is itself a framework with all the basic classes required.
My problem is, while it's quite easy to get a WebDAV server running using SabreDAV alone, it doesn't work that well when I use Symfony.
Without Symfony, it boils down to:
$server = new DAV\Server($rootDirectory);
$server->exec();
And I can use cadaver to access my directory.
More here: http://code.google.com/p/sabredav/wiki/GettingStarted
I tried to do the same in my controller with Symfony, using:
return new Response($server->exec());
but for some reason cadaver doesn't have access to the folder.
I guess I'm missing something about the way responses work in Symfony, but what? SabreDAV uses its own system of http requests and responses, but if (as I presume) Symfony doesn't mess with superglobal variables such as $_SERVER, this shouldn't be an issue.
About requests and responses in Symfony: http://symfony.com/doc/current/book/http_fundamentals.html#requests-and-responses-in-symfony
Here's what I did; it's a bit slow and there must be a better way, but I'll make do with that for the moment:
Controller.php :
$path=(__DIR__.'/../../../../web/public/');
$path=realpath($path);
$publicDir= new \MyClasses\FS\MyDirectory($path);
$server = new \Sabre\DAV\Server($publicDir);
$server->setBaseUri('/Symfony/web/app_dev.php/');
{
$SyRequest = Request::createFromGlobals();
$_server=$SyRequest->server->all();
$_post=$SyRequest->request->all();
}
{
$SaRequest=new \MyClasses\HTTP\Request($_server,$_post);
$resourceStream=false;
$SaRequest->setBody($SyRequest->getContent($resourceStream),$resourceStream);
}
{
$server->httpRequest=$SaRequest;
$SaResponse=new \MyClasses\HTTP\Response();
$server->httpResponse=$SaResponse;
$server->exec();
}
{
$content=ob_get_clean();
}
{
$SyResponse=new Response($content,http_response_code(),headers_list());
}
return $SyResponse;

$server->exec();
Doesn't really return anything. It attempts to set headers itself, and stream the output to php://output (indeed, with the built-in request/response system).
If you want to embed SabreDAV into symfony, the most proper way to solve this is to subclass both Sabre\HTTP\Request and Sabre\HTTP\Response, and set these in the server (setting the ->httpRequest and ->httpResponse properties) before calling ->exec.
Your overridden request/response objects should then map to symfony's equivalents.
I don't know enough about symfony to tell you if they map cleanly and easily though, and I imagine it will in practice be simpler to try to work around symfony's system (although from an architectural standpoint, it will not be the most proper).

Related

Laravel: Customize the request flow

Within my app ("BIRD3"), I have a NodeJS server that uses the hprose RPC system to talk to a PHP server to query it run a request and return the result (the PHP server is multi-process and spawns a sub-process per request - for now). This proposes a few difficulties; headers, cookies, sessions.
In my Yii1 based app, I used an in-development branch of the runkit extension. But, as you can tell, this is super hacky, not clean, and dependency-wise, not a smart idea. But it worked, for the most part. Here is a snippet from that very bit of code I did:
<?php
// Header.
runkit_function_redefine("headers_sent", '', 'return false;');
runkit_function_redefine(
"header", '$to,$replace=false,$status=200',
'return HttpResponse::header($to);'
);
// We have a custom handler.
runkit_function_redefine(
"setcookie",
'$name,$value,$expire=0,$path="/",$domain=null,$secure=false,$httponly=false',
'return HttpResponse::setcookie($name,$value,$expire,$domain,$secure,$httponly);'
);
// Because...
runkit_function_redefine(
"session_regenerate_id",
'$deleteOld=false',
'return bird3_session_regenerate_id($deleteOld);'
);
Now, why did I need this? Simple: Yii does not have a direct way to override Session/Header/Cookie management without doing a good load of wiring of the internals. Overriding internal dependencies with extended, derived classes is not very easy and bulks up the config file a lot.
So my question is:
Does Laravel give me the possibility to extend a few classes, override methods that do Session and Header and Cookie management and enhance it to use my custom functions instead?

Downsides to Slim as a REST API framework

I have been experimenting with Slim for a few days now and there is a lot that I like. However, there is one thing that nags me - when Slim is used to build a REST API it insists on putting everything into one single .php file - or even worse, a load of anonymous functions (one for each exposed REST method).
This works, that is not the issue. However, does it not mean that when used for building any but the most trivial of APIs you are imposing an unnecessary burden on the server by getting it to load and parse a potentially really big PHP file when only a tiny percentage of its code is relevant?
If yes, then it begs the next question - I am a newbie to micro frameworks - is there a micro framework that does things in a way that avoids this issue?
I'm unsure whether you are looking for a framework for a complete website or for an api alone. If latter I can recommend restler, which is a very simple, OO and stable package for developing API's.
On the other hand Laravel has built in resource controllers to ease the api development, it also has a very fast growing community.
If you're looking for both a website framework ánd an api framework in one, my guess is it will be very difficult combining that into one micro framework. Laravel/Symfony and other frameworks will eventually be needed especially if you expect growth in the project.
I made a REST API using AltoRouter:
http://altorouter.com/
I like the fact that after one route matches I can choose how to make the call, so I can point to the folder where I have all the REST controllers divided in several well organized files.
http://altorouter.com/usage/processing-requests.html
An example:
function rest_data($data, $format)
{
header("Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate");
header("Expires: 0");
header('Content-Type: ' . $format);
if (is_object($data) && method_exists($data, '__keepOut'))
{
$data = clone $data;
foreach ($data->__keepOut() as $prop)
{
unset($data->$prop);
}
}
$options = 0;
$json=json_encode($data, $options);
echo $json;
}
$router = new AltoRouter();
$router->setBasePath('/rest');
$router->map('GET|POST','/', 'home#index', 'home');
$router->map('GET','/sample_users/all', 'sample_user#all', 'sample_users_get');
// match current request
$match = $router->match();
if($match && $match['name']=='home')
{
// write some intro
exit();
}
if($match)
{
$target=$match['target'];
list($class_name,$function_name) = explode("#",$target);
require($conf["src.path"].'/rest/'.$class_name.'.php');
foreach($_GET as $k=>$v) $match['params'][$k] = $v;
$controller = new $class_name;
$res = $controller->$function_name($match['params']);
rest_data($res,RestFormat::JSON);
}
If you are not so keen on the Slim PHP framework might I suggest something like Symfony ? Personally I like the way Slim works, and suits what I need to build right down to a T - however I can see your frustration with creating a RESTful solution. Symfony on the other hand breaks things up a little more so you have less fat controllers.
If Symfony isn't right for you I guess you could pull out a heavyweight ike Laravel?

Getting CakeS3 to work in the CakeShell

I want to be able to call the CakeS3 plugin from the Cake Shell. However, as I understand it components cannot be loaded from the shell. I have read this post outlining strategies for overcoming it: using components in Cakephp 2+ Shell - however, I have had no success. The CakeS3 code here is similar to perfectly functioning cake S3 code in the rest of my app.
<?php
App::uses('Folder','Utility');
App::uses('File','Utility');
App::uses('CakeS3.CakeS3','Controller/Component');
class S3Shell extends AppShell {
public $uses = array('Upload', 'User', 'Comment');
public function main() {
$this->CakeS3 = new CakeS3.CakeS3(
array(
's3Key' => 'key',
's3Secret' => 'key',
'bucket' => 'bucket')
);
$this->out('Hello world.');
$this->CakeS3->permission('private');
$response = $this->CakeS3->putObject(WWW_ROOT . '/file.type' , 'file.type', $this->CakeS3->permission('private'));
if ($response == false){
echo "it failed";
} else {
echo "it worked";
}
}
This returns an error of "Fatal error: Class 'CakeS3' not found in /home/app/Console/Command/S3Shell.php. The main reason I am trying to get this to work is so I can automate some uploads with a cron. Of course, if there is a better way, I am all ears.
Forgive me this "advertising"... ;) but my plugin is probably better written and has a better architecture than this CakeS3 plugin if it is using a component which should be a model or behaviour task. Also it was made for exactly the use case you have. Plus it supports a few more storage systems than only S3.
You could do that for example in your shell:
StorageManager::adapter('S3')->write($key, StorageManager::adapter('Local')->read($key));
A file should be handled as an entity on its own that is associated to whatever it needs to be associated to. Every uploaded file (if you use or extend the models that come with the plugin, if not you have to take care of that) is stored as a single database entry that contains the name of the config that was used and some meta data for that file. If you do the line of code above in your shell you will have to keep record in the table if you want to access it this way later. Just check the examples in the readme.md out. You don't have to use the database table as a reference to your files but I really recommend the system the plugin implements.
Also, you might not be aware that WWW_ROOT is public accessible, so in the case you store sensitive data there it can be accessed publicly.
And finally in a shell you should not use echo but $this->out() for proper shell output.
I think the App:uses should look like:
App::uses('CakeS3', 'CakeS3.Controller/Component');
I'm the author of CakeS3, and no I'm afraid there is no "supported" way to do this as when we built this plugin, we didn't need to run uploads from shell and just needed a simple interface to S3 from our controllers. We then open sourced the plugin as a simple S3 connector.
If you'd like to have a go at modifying it to support shell access, I'd welcome a PR.
I don't have a particular road map for the plugin, so I've tagged your issue on github as an enhancement and will certainly consider it in future development, but I can't guarantee that it would fit your time requirements so that's why I mention you doing a PR.

Creating a web service in PHP

I would like to create a web service in PHP which can be consumed by different consumers (Web page, Android device, iOS device).
I come from a Microsoft background so am confortable in how I would do it in C# etc. Ideally I would like to be able to provide a REST service which can send JSON.
Can you let me know how I can achieve this in PHP?
Thanks
Tariq
I developed a class that is the PHP native SoapServer class' REST equivalent.
You just include the RestServer.php file and then use it as follows.
class Hello
{
public static function sayHello($name)
{
return "Hello, " . $name;
}
}
$rest = new RestServer(Hello);
$rest->handle();
Then you can make calls from another language like this:
http://myserver.com/path/to/api?method=sayHello&name=World
(Note that it doesn't matter what order the params are provided in the query string. Also, the param key names as well as the method name are case-insensitive.)
Get it here.
I would suggest you go for Yii it is worth of learning. You can easily establish it in this.
Web Service. Yii provides CWebService and CWebServiceAction to simplify the work of implementing Web service in a Web application. Web service relies on SOAP as its foundation layer of the communication protocol stack.
Easiest way in PHP is to use GET/POST as data-in and echo as data-out.
Here's a sample:
<?php if(empty($_GET['method'])) die('no method specified');
switch($_GET['method']){
case 'add': {
if(empty($_GET['a']) || empty($_GET['b'])) die("Please provide two numbers. ");
if(!is_numeric($_GET['a']) || !is_numeric($_GET['b'])) die("Those aren't numbers, please provide numbers. ");
die(''.($_GET['a']+$_GET['b']));
break;
}
}
Save this as test.php and go to http://localhost/test.php?method=add&a=2&b=3 (or wherever your webserver is) and it should say 5.
PHP does have native support for a SOAP server ( The SoapServer class manual shows it) and I've found it pretty simple to use.
Creating a REST style API is pretty easy if you use a framework. I don't want to get into a debate about which framework is better but CakePHP also supports output as XML and I'm pretty sure others will as well.
If you're coming from a Microsoft background just be careful about thinking about "datasets". They are a very specific Microsoft thing and have been a curse of mine in the past. It's probably not going to be an issue for you, but you may want to just see the differences between Microsoft and open implementations.
And of course PHP has a native json_encode() function.
You can check out this nice RESTful server written for Codeigniter, RESTful server.
It does support XML, JSON, etc. responses, so I think this is your library.
There is even a nice tutorial for this on the Tutsplus network -
Working with RESTful Services in CodeIgniter
You can also try PHP REST Data Services https://github.com/chaturadilan/PHP-Data-Services
You can use any existing PHP framework like CodeIgniter or Symfony or CakePHP to build the webservices.
You can also use plain PHP like disscussed in this example

Rails style URL mapping in PHP

Is there any standard library to do Rails style URL mapping in PHP? I am not using any framework, all the code is hand-written. Basically, I am looking for a library that does this
example.com/user/1/active
this should map to a user, with id = 1 and status = 2 (those being the parameters). I should be able to define the map.
There are roughly ten thousand ways to do this in PHP.
I've recently become a fan of klein.php, a lightweight bit of router code with some handy convenience methods. It's not a framework, and doesn't get in the way of you using one if you wanted to.
It's basically little more than "here's a URL pattern, and here's the function to run when the pattern matches."
Frameworks are really built to handle that automatically, but short of using a framework, you would be best off writing your own .htaccess rules (if you are using linux or os x), or try checking out how say, CakePHP handles url rewriting and base off of that.
Example:
http://example.com/name/corey
RewriteRule ^(.+)/(.+)$ /$1.php?name=$2 [NC,L]
That would rewrite the above url to /name.php?name=corey
PHP's purpose is not to handle differently formatted URLs. There should be some custom application logic taking care of this.
You've mentioned that you are not using any framework at this moment, so I would like to propose you to include Silex, it's a micro framework based on the components of Symfony 2.
Here's the 'Hello World' example:
require_once __DIR__.'/silex.phar';
$app = new Silex\Application();
$app->get('/hello/{name}', function($name) use($app) {
return 'Hello '.$app->escape($name);
});
$app->run();
You've mentioned that you are currently using PHP 5.2. Silex uses namespaces, which are available from PHP 5.3 and so on, so you will have to upgrade your PHP to take this approach.
Go with Symfony framework.
http://symfony.com/blog/new-in-symfony-1-2-toward-a-restful-architecture-part-1
Look at this response:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/238125/best-framework-for-php-and-creation-of-restful-based-web-services

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