Painless REST server Plugin for CakePHP
The CakePHP REST Plugin
takes whatever your existing controller actions gather in viewvars, reformats
it in json, csv or xml, and outputs it to the client. Because you hook it into
existing actions, you only have to write your features once, and this plugin
will just unlock them as API. The plugin knows it’s being called by looking at
the extension in the url: .json, .csv or .xml and optionally at
the Authorization: header.
So, if you’ve already coded /servers/reboot/2, you can have:
/servers/reboot/2.json/servers/reboot/2.xml
..up & running in no time.
CakePHP REST Plugin can even change the structure of your existing viewvars
using bi-directional xpaths. This way you can extract info using an xpath,
and output it to your API clients using another xpath. If this doesn’t make any sense,
please have a look at the examples.
You can attach the RestComponent to a controller, but you can limit REST
activity to a single action.
For best results, 2 changes to your application have to be made:
- A check if REST is active inside your error handler &
redirect() - Resource mapping in your router (see docs below)
Please use the cake-2.0 branch
. this is also where active development will be done. In time we’ll rename master → cake-1.3 and cake-2.0 → master.
- Action variables are now all contained in 1 big ‘actions’ setting, instead
of directly under settings, as to avoid setting vs action collision.
Behavior changed since pull 15
If you don’t change your controllers to reflect that, your API will break.
This
is your last good version.
These settings have moved likewise: ->{$action}['extract']->actions[$action]['extract']->{$action}['id']->actions[$action]['id']->{$action}['scopeVar']->actions[$action]['scopeVar']->{$action}['method']->actions[$action]['method']
- Ratelimiter is now toggled with
->ratelimit['enable']instead of->ratelimiter
- PHP 5.2.6+ or the PECL json package
- CakePHP 1.2/1.3
[Manual]
- Download this: http://github.com/kvz/cakephp-rest-plugin/zipball/master
- Unzip that download.
- Copy the resulting folder to app/plugins
- Rename the folder you just copied to
rest
[GIT Submodule]
In your app directory type:
git submodule add git://github.com/kvz/cakephp-rest-plugin.git plugins/rest
git submodule init
git submodule update
[GIT Clone]
In your plugin directory type
git clone git://github.com/kvz/cakephp-rest-plugin.git restDo you run Apache? Make your app/webroot/.htaccess look like so:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]
# Adds AUTH support to Rest Plugin:
RewriteRule .* - [env=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization},last]
</IfModule>In my experience Nginx & FastCGI already make the HTTP_AUTHORIZATION
available which is used to parse credentials for authentication.
Beware that you can no longer use $this->render() yourself
<?php
class ServersController extends AppController {
public $components = array(
'RequestHandler',
'Rest.Rest' => array(
'catchredir' => true, // Recommended unless you implement something yourself
'debug' => 0,
'actions' => array(
'view' => array(
'extract' => array('server.Server' => 'servers.0'),
),
'index' => array(
'extract' => array('rows.{n}.Server' => 'servers'),
),
),
),
);
/**
* Shortcut so you can check in your Controllers wether
* REST Component is currently active.
*
* Use it in your ->flash() methods
* to forward errors to REST with e.g. $this->Rest->error()
*
* @return boolean
*/
protected function _isRest() {
return !empty($this->Rest) && is_object($this->Rest) && $this->Rest->isActive();
}
}
?>extract extracts variables you have in: $this->viewVars and makes them
available in the resulting XML or JSON under the name you specify in the value
part.
Here’s a more simple example of how you would use the viewVar tweets as-is:
<?php
class TweetsController extends AppController {
public $components = array (
'Rest.Rest' => array(
'catchredir' => true,
'actions' => array(
'extract' => array(
'index' => array('tweets'),
),
),
),
);
public function index() {
$tweets = $this->_getTweets();
$this->set(compact('tweets'));
}
}
?>And when asked for the xml version, Rest Plugin would return this to your clients:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<tweets_response>
<meta>
<status>ok</status>
<feedback>
<item>
<message>ok</message>
<level>info</level>
</item>
</feedback>
<request>
<request_method>GET</request_method>
<request_uri>/tweets/index.xml</request_uri>
<server_protocol>HTTP/1.1</server_protocol>
<remote_addr>123.123.123.123</remote_addr>
<server_addr>123.123.123.123</server_addr>
<http_host>www.example.com</http_host>
<http_user_agent>My API Client 1.0</http_user_agent>
<request_time/>
</request>
<credentials>
<class/>
<apikey/>
<username/>
</credentials>
</meta>
<data>
<tweets>
<item>
<tweet_id>123</tweet_id>
<message>looking forward to the finals!</message>
</item>
<item>
<tweet_id>123</tweet_id>
<message>i need a drink</message>
</item>
</tweets>
</data>
</tweets_response>
As you can see, the controller name + response is always the root element
(for json there is no root element). Then the content is divived in meta & data,
and the latter is where your actual viewvars are stored. Meta is there to show any
information regarding the validity of the request & response.
Check the HTTP header as shown here.
You can control the authKeyword setting to control what keyword belongs to your
REST API. By default it uses: TRUEREST. Have your users supply a header like:
Authorization: TRUEREST username=john&password=xxx&apikey=247b5a2f72df375279573f2746686daa
Now, inside your controller these variables will be available by calling
$this->Rest->credentials(). This plugin only handles the parsing of the header,
and passes the info on to your app. So login anyone with e.g. $this->Auth->login()
and the information you retrieved from $this->Rest->credentials();
Example:
<?php
class TweetsController extends AppController {
public $components = array ('Rest.Rest');
public function beforeFilter () {
if (!$this->Auth->user()) {
// Try to login user via REST
if ($this->Rest->isActive()) {
$this->Auth->autoRedirect = false;
$data = array(
$this->Auth->userModel => array(
'username' => $credentials['username'],
'password' => $credentials['password'],
),
);
$data = $this->Auth->hashPasswords($data);
if (!$this->Auth->login($data)) {
$msg = sprintf('Unable to log you in with the supplied credentials. ');
return $this->Rest->abort(array('status' => '403', 'error' => $msg));
}
}
}
parent::beforeFilter();
}
?>If you’re going to make use of this plugin’s Logging & Ratelimitting (default)
and you should run the database schema found in: config/schema/rest_logs.sql.
<?php
// Add an element for each controller that you want to open up
// in the REST API
Router::mapResources(array('servers'));
// Add XML + JSON to your parseExtensions
Router::parseExtensions('rss', 'json', 'xml', 'json', 'pdf');
?>If you’re using the built-in ratelimiter, you may still want a little control
yourself. I provide that in the form of 4 callbacks:
<?php
class TweetsController extends AppController {
public $components = array ('Rest.Rest');
public function restlogBeforeSave ($Rest) {}
public function restlogAfterSave ($Rest) {}
public function restlogBeforeFind ($Rest) {}
public function restlogAfterFind ($Rest) {}
?>That will be called in you AppController if they exists.
You may want to give a specific user a specific ratelimit. In that case you can
use the following callback in your User Model:
<?php
class TweetsController extends AppController {
public $components = array ('Rest.Rest');
public function restRatelimitMax ($Rest, $credentials = array()) { }
?>And for that user the return value of the callback will be used instead of the
general class limit you could have specified in the settings.
You can map callbacks to different places using the callbacks setting like so:
<?php
class TwitterController extends AppController {
public $components = array(
'Rest.Rest' => array(
'catchredir' => true,
'callbacks' => array(
'cbRestlogBeforeSave' => 'restlogBeforeSave',
'cbRestlogAfterSave' => 'restlogAfterSave',
'cbRestlogBeforeFind' => 'restlogBeforeFind',
'cbRestlogAfterFind' => array('Common', 'setCache'),
'cbRestlogFilter' => 'restlogFilter',
'cbRestRatelimitMax' => 'restRatelimitMax',
),
),
);
}
?>If the resolved callback is a string we assume it’s a method in the calling controller.
Here’s an example of the logFilter callback
<?php
/**
* Only log when special conditions have been met
*
* @param <type> $Rest
* @param <type> $log
*
* @return <type>
*/
public function restlogFilter ($Rest, $log) {
if (Configure::read('App.short') === 'truecare') {
// You could also do last minute changes to the data being logged
return $log;
}
// Or return false to prevent logging alltogether
return false;
}
?>You can chose to override Rest’s default configuration using a global:
<?php
Configure::write('Rest.settings', array(
'version' => '0.3',
'log' => array(
'vars' => array(
'{environment}' => Configure::read('App.short') . '-' . Configure::read('App.environment'),
),
'pretty' => false,
// Optionally, choose to store some log fields on disk, instead of in the database
'fields' => array(
'data_in' => '/var/log/rest/{environment}/{controller}/{date_Y}_{date_m}/{username}_{id}.log',
'meta' => '/var/log/rest/{environment}/{controller}/{date_Y}_{date_m}/{username}_{id}.log',
'data_out' => '/var/log/rest/{environment}/{controller}/{date_Y}_{date_m}/{username}_{id}.log',
),
),
));
?>And you can override that on a per-controller basis like so:
<?php
class TwitterController extends AppController {
public $components = array(
'Rest.Rest' => array(
'log' => array(
'pretty' => true,
),
),
);
}
?>So:
Rest default < Global Rest.settings config < Controller Rest.Rest component settings
Thanks to
Chris Toppon, there now also is
JSONP support out of the box.
No extra PHP code or configuration is required on the server side with this patch,
just supply either the parameter callback or jsoncallback to the JSON url
provided by your plugin and the output will be wrapped in mycallback as a function.
For example:
<script type="text/javascript">
var showPrice = function (data) {
alert('Product: ' + data.product.name + ', Price: ' + data.product.price);
}
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://server2.example.com/getjson?callback=showPrice"></script>With jQuery, something similar could have been achieved like so:
jQuery.getJSON('http://www.yourdomain.com/products/product.json', function (data) {
alert('Product: ' + data.product.name + ', Price: ' + data.product.price);
});But for cross-domain requests, use JSONP. jQuery will substitute ? with the callback.
jQuery.getJSON('http://www.yourdomain.com/products/product.json?callback=?', function (data) {
alert('Product: ' + data.product.name + ', Price: ' + data.product.price);
});Good explanations of typical JSONP usage here:
- What is JSONP?
- Cross-domain communications with JSONP, Part 1: Combine JSONP and jQuery to
quickly build powerful mashups
- More testing
Cake 2.0 supportCake 1.3 supportThe RestLog model that tracks usage should focus more on IP for rate-limiting than account info. This is mostly to defend against denial of server & brute force attemptsMaybe some Refactoring. This is pretty much the first attempt at a working plugin(thx to Jonathan Dalrymple) – XML (now only JSON is supported)
This plugin was based on:
- Priminister’s API presentation during CakeFest #03, Berlin
- The help of Jonathan Dalrymple
- REST documentation
- CakeDC article
I held a presentation on this plugin during the first Dutch CakePHP meetup:
I’m writing a client side API that talks to this plugin for the company I work for.
If you’re looking to provide your customers with something similar,
it may be helpful to have a look at it.
Like this plugin? Consider a small donation
Love this plugin? Consider a big donation :)
Licensed under MIT
Copyright © 2009-2011, Kevin van Zonneveld
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