PHP RESTFul app skeleton

The goal of this project is to provide a simple and easy to use framework to facilitate RESTFul app development with PHP. In a nutshell, it's a set of libraries gathered together to create a simple framework based on the MVC pattern. It uses Klein library as it's internal router and also integrates a bunch of features such as jwt management.

Getting started

1. PHP 5.3.x is required
2. composer is required
3. Change to your working directory and run git clone https://github.com/dabrahim/php-rest-app-skeleton.git your-project-name
4. Change to your-project-name and run composer install to download all the required dependencies of the project

Basic configurations

Before you start using this framework, you should edit the configuration file under /core/config.php With all the comments removed, the default content looks like this :

const SECTIONS = array(
    'sample'
);

const BASE_DIR = 'rest-app-skeleton/';

const DEBUG = true;

const LOG_REQUESTS = true;

const DATABASE_CONFIG = array(
    'SGBD' => 'mysql',
    'HOST' => 'localhost',
    'DATABASE' => '',
    'USER' => '',
    'PASSWORD' => ''
);

const SIGNATURE_KEY = "Put a strong key here";

The SECTION constant allows you to list the different sections of your application, each of which representing the upper level or block of an endpoint (or route). When you add a new section, the framework automatically generates the controller file under /controllers folder and names it your-section-name.php. By convention, all your controllers should be named the same as your section otherwise they'll be ignored.

The default content of a controller looks like this

$this->respond('[*]?', function ($request, $response) {
   return 'This is the default controller';
});

As mentioned ealier, the framework uses Klein as it's internal router so we highly recommend to go and check their documentation to get a basic understanding of how the routing is done. Basically what the sample code above does is returning this is the default controller to every request to the /users endpoint regardless of what follows (e.g /users/login, /users/some/path, etc.).

The BASE_DIR constant is used to indicate the path to your project directory if it's not located into the root folder served by default by your web server. If for example your project is under /somefolder/anotherfolder then that would write that as your BASE_DIR value. If the project is ready to be deployed, then leave it to an empty string.

The DEBUG constant which is true by default tells to the framework whether you're in development mode or in deployment mode. It prevents from returning sensitive error messages to the API client. Once in production mode, leave it to false.

The LOG_REQUESTS tells to the framework if the received requests should be logged to the database (if it's correctly set up) or not. It defaults to true and automatically creates the needed table into the database.

The DATABASE_CONFIG constant is an associative array which holds the database configuration. You should provide all the required information if you want to connect a database to your application. The framework uses PDO API for database access. To get an instance of it, just call CustomPDO::getInstance() from any controller.

Finally, the SIGNATURE_KEY constant holds the secret key that'll be used to sign your JSON Web Tokens. Choose a strong one and keep it secret.

Persistence management

The framework has no ORM tool yet so it uses the DAO/DTO pattern to handle persistence. The following explains how to organize your persistence layer, we assume that you already have a basic understanding of this pattern otherwise we recommend you to learn more about it before using this framework.

To create and persist objects of your model, you should follow a set of simple rules :

1. Every PHP class should end with .class.php
2. All your model objects (DTO) should be under /persistence/model directory
3. Your DAO objects should go under /persistence/interface and end with DAO
4. Your DAO implementations should go under /persistence/service and end with Service

Example

User.class.php

class User {
    private $_nom;
    
    public function getNom () {
        return $this->_nom;
    }
    
    public function setNom ($nom) {
        $this->_nom = $nom;
    }
}

UserDAO.class.php

interface UserDAO {
    public function create (User $user);
}

UserService.class.php

class UserService implements UserDAO {
    public function create (User $user) {
        // Method implementation
    }
}

Then, you can for instantiate the User class from any controller. The framework automatically handles the imports so you won't have to do it manually.

Contribution

The project is still under development so feel free to send a fork request for adding new features.