A Base project for APIs using the Phalcon framework
The Phalcon framework is an awesome PHP framework that exists as a C-extension to the language. This allows it to be incredibly fast. But aside from its quickness, it is an amazingly powerful fraemwork with excellent documentation that follows many best practises of modern software development. This includes using the Direct Injection pattern to handle service resolution across classes, a PSR-0 compliant autoloader, MVC architecture (or not), caching handlers for database, flatfile, redis, etc.. and a ton of additional features.
The purpose of this project is to establish a base project with Phalcon that uses the best practices of both the Phalcon Framework and API Design, as discussed in the seminal work from Apigee.
This project establishes much of the boilerplate needed to create a well-designed API. It doesn't seek to implement any of your program logic, merely facilitate the parsing of requests, show how an auth system could be incorporated, show simple cache strategies, and stub out basic response handling.
It is highly recommended to read through the index.php, HTTPException.php and RESTController.php files, as I've tried to comment them extensively.
Also included is an .htaccess file for Apache servers that will help with CORS requests-- though it is not compliant with REST, it does help for development purposes.
URL Structure:
/path1/path2?q=(search1:value1,search2:value2)&fields=field1,field2,field3&limit=10&offest=20&type=csv&suppress_error_codes=true
Search
Searches are determined by the 'q' parameter. Following that is a parenthesis enclosed list of key:value pairs, separated by commas.
ex: q=(name:Jonhson,city:Oklahoma)
Partial Responses
Partial responses are used to only return certain explicit fields from a record. They are determined by the 'fields' paramter, which is a list of field names separated by commas, enclosed in parenthesis.
ex: fields=(id,name,location)
Limit and Offset
Often used to paginate large result sets. Offset is the record to start from, and limit is the number of records to return.
ex: limit=20&offset=20 will return results 21 to 40
Return Type
Overrides any accept headers. JSON is assumed otherwise. Return type handler must be implemented.
ex: type=xml
Suppressed Error Codes
Some clients require all responses to be a 200 (Flash, for example), even if there was an application error. With this paramter included, the application will always return a 200 response code, and clients will be responsible for checking the response body to ensure a valid response.
ex: suppress_error_codes=true