Retort

Easy PHP route definition and request validation using attributes introduced in PHP 8! A lot of routing boilerplate is eliminated and request validation is extremely straightforward!

Just add Route attributes your controller class methods to define route methods. This removes the need for repetitive boilerplate route definition files.

#[Route('GET', '/thing/{id:\d+}')]
public function thingGet(ThingGetRequest $request): array {}

To validate requests, add Validation attributes to request class properties and use createObject() to validate and create request objects. Make sure the route methods have the desired request parameters.

use Retort\Validation\ValidNumber;
use Retort\Validation\ValidString;

class ThingGetRequest extends RetortRequest
{
    #[ValidNumber(true, 1)] // $id will be a number >= 1 and is required (true)
    public int $id;
}

$request = Validation::createObject(ThingGetRequest::class, ['id' => 0]); // throws Error
$request = Validation::createObject(ThingGetRequest::class, ['id' => 1]); // creates a ThingGetRequest object with id = 1

Using the Validation property attributes it is possible to automatically generate Typescript or other types from RetortRequest objects for frontend use! (see below)

Define and call a route method

Use the Route attribute to define route methods within your controller class.

use Retort\Mapping\Attributes\Route;

#[Route('GET', '/thing/{id:\d+}')]
public function thingGet(Id $request): array
{
    // return a "thing"
    return ['name' => 'A thing'];
}

Use the getRoutes() helper to get the routes for each controller class.

use Retort\Mapping\Helper;

$routes = Helper::getRoutes(YourController::class, AnotherController::class);

Use the route information in your router. Here is an example using FastRoute, but it should work with many different routers.

$dispatcher = FastRoute\simpleDispatcher(function (FastRoute\RouteCollector $r) {
    $routes = Helper::getRoutes(YourController::class);

    foreach ($routes as $route) {
        $r->addRoute($route['requestMethod'], $route['uri'], [
            'class' => $route['class'],
            'classMethod' => $route['classMethod'],
            'requestType' => $route['requestType']
        ]);
    }
});

Use the route information to call a route method.

// Validate the request (see below)
// $route['requestType'] specifies the request class
$request = Validation::createObject($route['requestType'], $payload);

$class = new $route['class'](); // $route['class'] specifies the controller class
$method = $route['classMethod']; // $route['classMethod] specifies the class method

header('Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8');
print json_encode($class->$method($request)); // call the class method

Validate a request

Use Validation::createObject() to validate requests. Validation::createObject() will create the specified object or throw an Error if validation fails.

class ThingGetRequest extends RetortRequest
{
    #[ValidNumber(true, 1)] // $id will be a number >= 1 and is required (true)
    public int $id;
}

$request = Validation::createObject(ThingGetRequest::class, ['id' => 0]); // throws Error
$request = Validation::createObject(ThingGetRequest::class, ['id' => 1]); // creates a ThingGetRequest object with id = 1

ValidString, ValidNumber, and ValidObject Validation objects are provided. Check their class definitions for validation options, e.g., required, min, max...

ValidObject can be used for nested objects and arrays of objects.

class GoingConcern extends RetortRequest
{
    #[ValidObject(true, Address::class)]
    public Address $address;

    #[ValidObject(true, Employees::class)]
    public array $employees; // use array type
}

Parameters can be made optional.

#[ValidString(false, 1)] // $nickname will be a string of length >= 1 and is optional (false)
public ?string $nickname;

Dependency injection

A few DependencyControllers are provided as examples. For instance, the MysqlController constructor accepts a mysqli object $myDb which can then be used within the controller such as through the included executeQuery() method.

use Retort\Controller\MysqlController;

class ThingController extends MysqlController
{
    #[Route('GET', '/thing/post')]
    public function thingPost(ThingPostRequest $request): array
    {
        $this->executeQuery('insert into things (name) values(?)', [$request->name]);
        return ['thingId' => $this->myDb->insert_id];
    }
}

$db = new mysqli('localhost', 'user', 'super_secure_password', 'database');
$class = new ThingController($db); // inject $db

Generating types

Run vendor/bin/retort_typegen -c <file> with your config file to generate types. The config file is a TOML file where configuration options and a type definition template are defined. See the sample config for more details. Templates are defined in mustache format.

Provide the classes to generate. Classes must be autoloaded and an instance of RetortRequest.

# Generate type definitions for these PHP classes
classes = [
    "Retort\\Test\\Helper\\Jacket"
]

Setup the template, in this case a Typescript class template.

# Sample template for Typescript type generation in mustache format
template = '''
interface {{class}} {
    {{#definitions}}
    {{name}}{{#nullable}}?{{/nullable}}: {{type}}{{#iterable}}[]{{/iterable}};
    {{/definitions}}
}
'''

Different templates for different languages can be deinfed. For example, here is a flutter class template.

class {{class}} {
    {{#definitions}}
    final {{type}}{{#nullable}}?{{/nullable}} {{name}};
    {{/definitions}}

    const {{class}}({
        {{#definitions}}
        {{^nullable}}required {{/nullable}}this.{{name}},
        {{/definitions}}
    });

    factory {{class}}.fromJson(Map<String, dynamic> json) {
        return {{class}}(
        {{#definitions}}
        {{name}}: json['{{name}}'],
        {{/definitions}}
        );
    }

    factory {{class}}.fromObject(Map<String, dynamic> json) {
        return {{class}}(
        {{#definitions}}
        {{name}}: json['{{name}}'],
        {{/definitions}}
        );
    }

    Map<String, dynamic> toJson() {
        return {
        {{#definitions}}
        '{{name}}': {{name}},
        {{/definitions}}
        };
    }
}

PHP types can be mapped to other languages under typeMap.

# Type mappings, e.g., int (php) to number (ts)
[typeMap]
int = "number"