Api Skeleton for Laravel 5.1

Table of Contents

• Installation
• API Debug
• Default Routes
• Authentication
• Transformers
• Responses and Errors
  • Validation Errors
• Swagger Documentation
• Docker
• Caddy
• Commands
• Testing

Installation

composer install

php artisan migrate:refresh

Folder Structure

The app folder contains 3 subfolders.

Applications - Contains the applications served, like API's, Sites, etc

Core - Contains the core, all the features can be used in your applications

Domains - The domains available, like repositories and models

Feel free to edit and customize this structure

API Debug

Enable more detailed output to your api. For enable set API_DEBUG=true

Default Routes

For prevent problems with responses, send a Accept: application/json header for every request

Authentication

POST api/v1/login

• Request

  • email (string) - Your email
  • password (string) - Your password

• Response 200 (application/json)

  • Body

      {
        "status_code": 200,
        "token": "your_token_here"
      }
    

POST api/v1/register

• Request

  • name (string) - Your name
  • email (string) - Your email
  • address (string) - Your address
  • telephone (string) - Your telephone
  • password (string) - Your password
  • password_confirmation (string) - The same as your password

• Response 200 (application/json)

  • Body

      {
        "status_code": 200,
        "token": "your_token_here"
      }
    

GET api/v1/me (need jwt token)

• Request

  • Headers

          Authorization: Bearer your_token_here
    

• Response 200 (application/json)

  • Body

      {
        "status_code": 200,
        "data": {
          "type": "users",
          "id": "1",
          "attributes": {
            "name": "Test",
            "address": "Street 223",
            "telephone": "12345678",
            "email": "test@test.com"
          }
        }
      }
    

Transformers

Transformers allow you to output flexible data structures for your API, an example integrated with the User repository is available

Responses and Errors

All exceptions thrown within the scope of your api (see isApiCall method in RestTrait) will be parsed by the laravel handler.

The Api exceptions will be parsed as json, the exceptions out of the api scope will be parsed with whoops (if app is not in production and APP_DEBUG is true) or otherwise by the normal handler.

Use the ResponseHelpers trait for standardize your api responses:

$this->ApiResponse($data, $status_code);

$this->badRequest();

$this->modelNotFound();

$this->notFound();

$this->methodNotAllowed();

$this->downForMaintenance();

Basically all the methods above are shortcuts and have the same signature as ApiResponse, and they are also used by the rest handler too

If you can customize the pattern for all responses, edit the ApiResponse method in App\Core\Traits\Rest\ResponseHelpers class

Remember to always use the methods from ResponseHelpers, because your project will always follow this pattern, so the maintenece is more easy

The default format for json responses is the following:

$this->ApiResponse('String Response');

{
    "status_code" => 200,
    "message" => 'String Response'
}

$this->ApiResponse(['joke' => "I'm a teapot"], 418);

{
    "status_code" => 418,
    "joke" => "I'm a teapot"
    
}

$this->badRequest();

{
    "status_code" => 400,
    "message" => "Bad Request"
    
}

...

Validation Errors

Please extend the App\Core\Http\Requests\Request for your validators, because the json response has a little change comparing with default FormRequest class.

In case of request is ajax, wantsJson or isApiCall a json response with errors will be automatically generated with 422 status.

The response body for errors is someting like this:

{
  "status_code": 422,
  "message": "Validation failed",
  "errors": {
    "field": [
      "Validation error is here"
    ],
    "other_field": [
      "Other validation error"
    ]
  }
}

You can customize the default error message editing the response method in App\Core\Http\Requests\Request

Swagger Documentation

You can use annotations and generate your api doc using the swagger:generate command

`php artisan swagger:generate {path=app/ --publish}` - Scan the path and create a swagger json mapping based on annotations

Alternativelly, a swagger.yaml complete mapping file is available inside docs folder, you can use then as a starting point for your documentation.

Test it in the swagger editor

Docker

This skeleton comes with docker containers preconfigured. See docker-compose.yml for adding or removing containers. The following build-in commands is available:

php artisan docker:up | down | restart - Start, drop or restart the docker containers specified on docker-compose.yml

Caddy

Caddy is a web server like apache or nginx, but with support for HTTP/2 and HTTPS by default. HTTP/2 is a new version of HTTP that makes your website load faster. HTTP/2 is enabled by default when the connection is served over HTTPS. A Caddyfile is present on this project, working for laravel. Feel free to modify then.

Please refer to caddy documentation or github repository for more information. For using caddy as a service, like on nginx for example, see here

Commands

The following commands is available for usage:

php artisan docker:up | down | restart - Start, drop or restart the docker containers specified on docker-compose.yml

php artisan ssh:run {command} | pull {--folder=public_html | --branch=master} - Execute ssh operations

php artisan swagger:generate {path=app/ --publish} - Scan the path and create a swagger json mapping based on annotations

Testing

This skeleton comes with multiple unit tests.

phpunit

For aditional features see the traits inside tests/Traits