codemix / restyii
Opinionated RESTful, HATEOAS compliant extension for Yii
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Requires
- php: >=5.3.0
This package is auto-updated.
Last update: 2024-10-24 04:18:03 UTC
README
A RESTful HATEOAS compliant extension for Yii. Allows your application to serve and accept JSON, JSONP, XML, CSV or HTML using the same code. The JSON and XML variants are based on the HAL media type.
WARNING: Pre-alpha software, use at your own risk.
Installation.
Install using composer. Requires php 5.3 or later.
Restyii makes use of a custom WebApplication
that replaces the Yii default. For this reason it's
necessary to replace existing calls to
Yii::createWebApplication($config)
with
Yii::createApplication('Restyii\\Web\\Application', $config)
in your index.php
file.
Server Configuration.
Example Restyii server application config
<?php
Yii::setPathOfAlias('vendor', __DIR__.'/../../vendor'); // the path to the composer vendors dir
return array(
'name' => 'Restyii Demo',
'description' => 'This is a description of the application!',
'import' => array(
'application.resources.*',
),
'modules' => array(
'gii'=>array(
'class'=>'system.gii.GiiModule',
'password'=>'yourSecretPassword',
// If removed, Gii defaults to localhost only. Edit carefully to taste.
'ipFilters'=>array('127.0.0.1','::1'),
'generatorPaths'=>array(
'vendor.codemix.restyii.gii-templates',
),
),
),
'components' => array(
'urlManager' => array(
'rules' => array(
'' => array('/default/index'),
array('class' => 'Restyii\\Web\\UrlRule'),
),
),
),
);
Restyii comes with a Gii code generator that makes generating resources easy.
Client Configuration.
Example Restyii client application config
<?php
return array(
'name' => 'Restyii Client Demo',
'import' => array(
'application.resources.*',
),
'components' => array(
'api' => array(
'class' => 'Restyii\\Client\\Connection',
'baseUrl' => 'http://yourapihostname/',
),
...
),
);
RAVE
Restyii follows the RAVE application architecture. RAVE is quite similar to MVC, but there are some important differences, RAVE stands for:
- Resources
- Actions
- Views
- Events
Importantly, Resources, Actions, Views and Events all describe themselves. This allows the RAVE application to be self-documenting.
Resources
Resources are analogous to the Model in MVC, but they have some key differences.
- Individual resources are explicitly tied to particular URLs.
- Resources know how to link to themselves and to related resources.
- Resources know how to describe themselves and their attributes.
- Resources know how to format their own attributes.
In RAVE, the bulk of your business logic should be placed in resources, RAVE embraces the fat model approach.
Actions
Actions are analogous to the operations performed by a Controller in MVC.
- Actions should accept any kind of resource. This promotes code reuse and is made possible by the rich meta data resources provide.
- Actions know which http headers and query string parameters to expect and how to describe them.
- Actions are associated with a specific HTTP verb that is used to perform an action, e.g. DELETE for delete actions.
- Actions return a HTTP status code along with their data.
Actions usually operate either on individual resources or collections of resources.
Views
RAVE Views are effectively identical to views in MVC. In Restyii they are used to decorate data (usually as HTML) when the client requests something other than XML, JSON etc.
Events
Events are triggered by resources when they change state in some way, such as when a particular model is created or updated. RAVE events are usually published to a message bus or a pub/sub channel to allow communication with other processes in the application, for example, to allow 'realtime' notifications in the browser.
Differences from standard Yii applications
In order to implement RAVE, Restyii applications require several changes to the standard Yii way of doing things.
Some important ones:
-
The web application must be an instance of
Restyii\Web\Application
. -
The default controller for all modules, including the main application, should be called
DefaultController
. This means the normalSiteController
should be renamed.DefaultController
should extend theRestyii\Controller\Root
class. -
The request (
Yii::app()->request
) now has agetResponse()
method that returns aRestyii\Web\Response
instance. This response instance is responsible for formatting and sending the data to the client. -
Controllers always use class based actions, and controllers are explicitly tied to resource types. Resource controllers extend
Restyii\Controller\Model
-
Actions always extend the
Restyii\Action\Base
class -
Rather than implementing
run()
, actions should implementpresent()
andperform()
methods. -
Rather than calling
$this->render(...)
, actions should return the data for the response from within thepresent()
andperform()
methods, along with the appropriate HTTP status code. -
Application has a
schema
component that introspects the application and determines the available resources, actions etc. -
Resources extend
Restyii\Model\ActiveRecord
. -
Resources have a
links()
method that returns the appropriate links for the current resource. -
Resources have
classLabel()
andinstanceLabel()
methods that return the appropriate labels for the resource type and a particular resource instance.