I am new to REST. I understand how to create the functions within the application. BUT I am not sure how to access the JSON request using REST with headers. I am using CakePHP as my framework and in addition to that I am using the CakePHP REST plugin by KVZ (https://github.com/kvz/cakephp-rest-plugin). I am using ACL within my application and therefore I need to login using REST headers or however you access that information. I am pretty sure your suppose to use the amazon S3 authentication method but I don't understand it. I haven't been able to find any clear information on this.
THE QUESTION: How do I access the function (http://localhost:5555/app/data/getAll.json) using a REST JSON Request with PHP? Please include how to send the username and password with HTTP_AUTHORIZATION/header. The more detailed the answered, the better.
Thanks
REST isn't a technology, its just a way of naming your urls. Have a look at http://www.xfront.com/REST-Web-Services.html. You can use any mechanism you like to access the page although Curl with PHP is probably the easiest way for you.
Have a look at the PHP curl docs, there are examples there to guide you.
Related
I'm quite new to PHP. As a learning project, I'm currently building a website on which users can order products.
I don't want my website to connect to the database I have directly, but I want that process to go through an API I've made. The API has a quite simple structure: the index.php receives the call and the variables (through post) and then, depending on the type of data received, runs one of the functions in one of it's controllers.
So, the question:
How do I set up a connection between my website and my php api (on the same server) to access my database?
I have searched the web and SO for API connections but most of the questions are about the FB API and oAuth etcetera. If I have missed a similar question please inform me because then I'll delete this question.
Any help would be much appreciated, Thank you in advance!
Sounds like you want to implement a REST API. There are a boatload of tutorials and helpful links that you can find very easily to read up on this subject. (Here is a decent starting point). There are also many, many frameworks that you can use that handle RESTful interactions automatically.
EDIT:
Once you have a REST API setup, the best way to connect and interact with your API in PHP is using the cURL module. This is a good intro to the subject of using cURL in PHP.
The current preferred structure for passing data from API -> client is JSON. PHP makes it trivial to work with JSON. Within your API use json_encode to convert a PHP variable into it's JSON equivalent string. Inside your client, convert the JSON response from your API into a PHP object using the inverse function: json_decode
This is a very well known/widely used technique and there are many more nuances to consider, but this should be a sufficient intro for testing purposes. Once you understand the ideas I strongly recommend doing some google/stackoverflow searches and reading more on the subject.
I'm asking this question because some of the websites is visited seems to be using a RESTful API to access the data even if it's on the website...
For example: my website will have 6 pages and 5 of them use the DB. But, I will also have a REST api for my partners...
So, the question is:
On my website, is it better to access directly the DB via mysqli_query or to use a RESTful API with Ajax calls to load data?
Just a note: I'll be using Zend Framework 2 for my RESTful API except if someone has a better option... I know Node.js and PHP... I'm able to write it in Ruby or something if it's better for me... Need a opinion on that...
Use the RESTful API.
The specification of REST is that we use the HTTP methods, which he calls verbs.(GET, POST, PUT, DELETE).
A direct request would be limiting it, or you would be using at most two method (verbs) - GET and POST.
For that you have to do this:
GET /user/frederick/edit
GET /user/frederick/update
GET /user/frederick/delete
GET /user/new
And with a RESTful API:
GET /user/frederick/
POST /user/new/
PUT /user/frederick/
DELETE /user/frederick/
The advantage of using your own API is that you don't have to write duplicate code. For example, you might have generate_for_rest and generate_for_server functions that do the same thing and just emit data in different formats. It's a good idea to reuse your own APIs as much as you can.
That said, I do find it a bit unusual that a website would communicate to itself with its own RESTful API. That requires an HTTP request (though it should be extremely fast) and conversion of the data twice. Instead it would make more sense to have an API that generates the data that you need and a facade that converts that data into formats for it to be used.
For example you could have a function get_all_users. Internally you can use get_all_users to get the results as php data structures that you can use immediately. In your controller that responds to HTTP requests you may do a JSON conversion, but you shouldn't be doing any duplicate work to get the data for either internal or external use.
I currently have a web app that uses the google maps API, PHP, and MySQL to populate custom map bubbles and markers on a map.
Currently, the app is hosted by us and managed by us and is included as an iframe on a clients page, however this is quite tiresome..
I would like to develop an API/library that can be included on the page and then inject code into a div container (much like Google maps does). However, i have no idea what to search for or what to read up on to learn.
I have a basic rest api that is configured to provide read-only functionality in json/jsonp format to an authorized client. I am using Phil Sturgeon's REST-SERVER library for CI.
Here is a link to the current format, we pull this page in an iframe with no-scrollbars.
http://fhaz.mapitusa.com
Update: I found a partial solution.. web widgets: http://alexmarandon.com/articles/web_widget_jquery/
i need to develop a web widget.
I need to know:
what to learn
what types of programming methodologies to know
What to look for examples
What are some options to get away from the iframe and using a sort of "hard embed".
You didn't say it out loud, but because you specifically mention you now have a read-only api i figure you also want to send commands to the (your) server. I would start with looking into authentication methods. And for this, I would go for OAuth. You'll have to write a basic client class which can connect and authenticate the client to the server. This can be pretty simple and small. Php even has a pecl extension available (see http://nl.php.net/manual/en/book.oauth.php) which is pretty easy to use. If you do not have the possibility of installing pecl extensions curl will also do the trick, and even that isn't really necessary. Twitter also has a nice explanation of how OAuth works, with links to external resources. Check it out! https://dev.twitter.com/docs/auth/oauth
Note that at the server level you'll have to implement your own role system, oauth only lets your client connect to the server in a secure manner. Ie. it will let your "users" log in to your application, but will not check if the logged in user is, example given, an admin user with all rights, a read-only user or something in the middle.
If you have OAuth straightened out just write a list of API calls you want to implement. You should namespace them, for example like:
/map/marker/get
/map/marker/set
/map/bubble/get
...
Your client API should be able to make a call like this:
$api = new MyGreatApi();
$params = array('id' => 3, 'color' => 'red', ...);
$response = $api->call('/map/marker/get', $params);
echo $response;
Check out some oauth library implementations like the one Twitter promotes (https://dev.twitter.com/docs/twitter-libraries#php), or in example the really simple one bits on the run uses (http://developer.longtailvideo.com/botr/downloads/php-api-kit.zip)
At server level you catch the api call and route the request to the specific controller (to use some MVC terms). If, eg, you fetch the call '/map/marker/get' you can just explode('/', $call); and search for the right class/function/method/whatever and let it do the magic for you, then send back the output (which can be as simple as to echo $output) and you are up and running! Note that if you have the authentication and role-checking right, the functions which produce the output can be treated as normal, oldschool, php functions. There's nothing special at them! It's the authentication and routing of api calls which should be your main concern.
I hope this clarifies some of your questions and give you a direction. If I misunderstood your question, please correct me!
I am planning to write an API using PHP and and I am very interested in HTTP protocol type of API that exists but I don't know what people call that type of API. I think you can point me towards the best guide if I let you know how I want the developers to use it.
Assuming there are following functions.
Login
SignUp
GetRequests
Now the Login should take 2 parameters Username and Password of the user that exist in the database. It should then return a token which will be used to request other resources like "GetRequests" function. So once the user has the token, s/he can call "GetRequests" passing the token and will get the information.
The SignUp function works the same way as login but the input parameters are different. It also returns a token and can be used to make other requests for resources.
There are many other functions but I believe these are enough to get an idea of what type of API I am talking about. Can you please guide me as which Tools or Frameworks I can use to develop this sort of API quickly and easily.
You don't need any specific tools or frameworks to write such a thing or to put it another way, you can use any framework you want. A typical web API "function" works just like an ordinary web page, the only difference is that is doesn't accept cookies (and other browser-specific http headers) and usually returns its output as xml or json rather than html.
What you are describing is a general implementation pattern, and isn't specific to any single approach of implementing web services.
Nowadays, many web service API's are implemented either using REST or SOAP. You would be able to implement what you are describing with either of these.
You can get a technical overview through the above Wikipedia links, or, simply google REST vs. SOAP, and you'll get lots of pages giving you the good and the bad of both approaches.
My advice would be to Learn REST, JSON. I think this tutorial Working with RESTful Services in CodeIgniter might be interesting to study.
maybe something like this ?
$command = $_REQUEST['command'];
$param = $_REQUEST['param'];
echo api::$command($param);
class api{
static function saySomething($param){
return $param;
}
}
and try access the page with
http://localhost/test.php?command=SaySomething¶m=what
I want to create a REST service with PHP 5. I'd appreciate it if people would recommend some guides/tutorials on the subject. I'd like tutorials that cover the whole process, including the creation, securing and deployment of the service. Thanks.
I've been planning on building a full API/REST interface as of yet I've only implemented some features. The key concept that you need to get around is that it is simply a XML/JSON (etc) response to a predefined url.
You can quite easily get set up using .htaccess & mod rewrite to allow domain.com/method/var/id or some similar structure to redirect to domain.com/script.php?method=method&?var=var&?id=id . Once this is done, you can use these in your script, create your response and return it(print/echo) to script.php .
When a user sends a request, they will received the result that you have specified.
Json is very easy to use and implement thanks to http://php.net/manual/en/function.json-encode.php
You want to look into mod rewrite for apache.
As for authentication, it shouldnt differ to any other login/authentication have a look at sessions for php. http://php.net/manual/en/features.sessions.php
Hope this helps.
You could check out the wiki page on it. There is some abstract explaination on the matter.
For more concrete implementation take a look at the Zend package wich I use to build REST services.
I have always used the Zend_Rest libraries when trying to accomplish this task. They are pretty easy to implement and pretty well documented.
Zend_Rest