What is Maqalat?

Maqalat is a completely functional API with CRUD functionality whose features can be tested. Setting it up will create 30 Fake Articles with an id, title and body along with an author_url currently set to https://imtiazraqib.com

Setup Maqalat

1. Download XAMPP and Composer

2. Open XAMPP Control Center and start the Apache Server and MySQL server

3. Clone the repository

4. Open the repository folder using VS Code or your preferred code editor and navigate to .env file

   • The .env will not exist, so create a new file and use the .env.example template to fill it up and follow along
   • Under DB_CONNECTION=mysql make sure the following are as below:
     • DB_DATABASE=maqalat
     • DB_USERNAME=root OR $your username$
     • DB_PASSWORD= $your password$ or leave it empty if you have no password

5. To route Laravel homepage to maqalat.test, follow the steps below:

   • go to ../xampp/apache/conf/extra and open httpd-vhosts.conf with an editor
   • Input this at the bottom of the httpd-vhosts.conf file:

   <VirtualHost *:80>
       DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs/maqalat/public"
       ServerName maqalat.test
   </VirtualHost>

   • Open Notepad or the equivalent in your OS as administrator
   • Open a file similar to this syntax that can be found in Windows - C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc
   • Make sure All Files option is selected and open the hosts file
   • Add this at the bottom of the comments - 127.0.0.1 maqalat.test
   
   

6. The steps provided below are taken from Traversy Media's Larticles API

   • Open a terminal within the repository
   • Install dependencies by composer install
   • Generate an encryption key, run php artisan key:generate
   • Run Migrations by php artisan migrations
   • Import Articles by php artisan db:seed

7. Fire up a browser and type in http://maqalat.test and it is working if you see the Laravel logo

   • Check if the database is populated by the seeded articles by going to http://maqalat/api/articles

8. Fire up Postman or your choice of API tester (Although Postman is pretty cool, not sponsored! 😢)

9. Below is the workflow for Postman:

   • POST -> http://maqalat.test/api/article
     • Add a new Header with Key = Content-Type and Value = application/json
     • Body follows a raw format as shown below

         {
             "title":"Whatever is your new title",
             "body":"Whatever you wanna keep as the new body"
         }

   • GET -> http://maqalat.test/api/articles
   • PUT -> http://maqalat.test/api/article
     • Add a new Header with Key = Content-Type and Value = application/json
     • Body follows a raw format as shown below

         {
             "article_id": 4,
             "title":"Whatever is your UPDATED title",
             "body":"Whatever you wanna keep as the UPDATED body"
         }

     • The article_id is the id of the article that you want to update with the following title and body
   • DEL -> http://maqalat.test/api/article/{id}
     • Replace {id} with the actual article id you want to delete.

Inspiration

The project is setup personally for me to learn Laravel and familiarize myself with the framework. The project would not have been possible without the tutorial from Traversy Media over at YouTube. His video titled, Laravel 5.5 API From Scratch Using Resources is what I used personally to follow along and learn the fundamentals of Laravel.

About Laravel

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