In this tutorial we are going to learn how to build a simple real world REST API with plain PHP. This API will be the basis of the next tutorials for adding JWT-based authentication and building your front-ends with modern JavaScript/TypeScript frameworks and libraries such as Angular, React.js and Vue.js etc.
Throughout the tutorial we'll create a simple API (but in the same time it's a real-world API. In fact you can use it to build a small stock tracking app) with the most straightforward and simplest architecture (and file structure) i.e we are not going to cover advanced concepts such as MVC, routing or template languages (we will use PHP itself as the template language. I know it's a bad practice but this is how you do things when you first get started using PHP also if you are looking for these concepts you better use a PHP framework, most of them are built around these advanced concepts) so this tutorial can be as beginners-friendly as possible.
What is an API?
API stands for A pplication I nterface P rogramming. It's an interface that allows applications to communicate with each other. In case of the web it refers to the interface (a set of URLs that allows you to exchange data with a web application via a set of operations commonly known as CRUD--Create, Read, Update and Delete operations by sending HTTP requests such as POST, GET, PUT and DELETE etc.
What is REST?
REST stands for RE presentational S tate T ransfer". It's a set of rules that define how to exchange resources in a distributed system such as stateleness i.e the server doesn't keep any information about the previous requests which means the current request should include every information the server needs for fulfilling the desired operation. Data is usually exchanged in JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) format.
So REST API refers to the interface that allows mobile devices and web browsers (or also other web servers) to create, read, update and delete resources in the server respecting the REST rules (such as being stateless).
Using REST you can build one back-end and then build different client apps or front-ends for web browsers and mobile devices (iOS and Android etc.) because the back-end is decoupled from the front-end--the communication between the client and the server apps takes place via the REST interface. You can offer your users another app or you can build more apps to support the other mobile platforms without touching the back-end code.
Database Design
In order to build a web API, you need a way to store data, behind the scene, in your server's database. For this tutorial we'll use MySQL RDMS ( R elational D atabase M anagement S ystem) which is the most used database system in the PHP world.
The first step is to design our database so we'll use the Entity-Relationship Diagram
An entity relationship diagram, or also an entity-relationship model, is a graphical representation of entities and how they relate to each other. They are used to model relational databases. In ER diagrams you use entities (boxes) to represent real world concepts or objects and relationships (arrows) to represent a relation between two entities.
There are three types of relationships: One-to-One, One-to-Many and Many-to-Many.
Here is a screenshot of an example ER model for our database
We have four entities that are related with each other: A product has a family, belongs to a location and can have many related transactions.
After creating an ER model you can easily write SQL CREATE statements to create the SQL tables in the MySQL database. You can simply map each entity to a SQL table and relationships to foreign keys.
Any decent ER diagramming tool will include an export button that can help you generate the SQL script from your ER model without having to write it manually.
Now let's create SQL for our database
CREATE TABLE `Product` (
`id` int(11) UNSIGNED AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
`sku` varchar(255),
`barcode` varchar(255),
`name` varchar(100),
`price` float,
`unit` varchar(20),
`quantity` float,
`minquantity` float,
`createdAt` datetime NOT NULL,
`updatedAt` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
`familyid` int(11) NOT NULL,
`locationid` int(11) NOT NULL
);
CREATE TABLE `Family` (
`id` int(11) UNSIGNED AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
`reference` varchar(50),
`name` varchar(100),
`createdAt` datetime NOT NULL,
`updatedAt` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
);
CREATE TABLE `Transaction` (
`id` int(11) UNSIGNED AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
`comment` text,
`price` float,
`quantity` float,
`reason` enum('New Stock','Usable Return','Unusable Return'),
`createdAt` datetime NOT NULL,
`updatedAt` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
`productid` int(11) NOT NULL
);
CREATE TABLE `Location` (
`id` int(11) UNSIGNED AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
`reference` varchar(50),
`description` text,
`createdAt` datetime NOT NULL,
`updatedAt` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
);
You can PhpMyAdmin or the MySQL CLI-based client to create a new database then copy and run the previous SQL queries to create the new tables.
You can also use an installer.php script which gets called one time to execute a SQL script that creates a database and create the database tables.
If you want to take this approach, create config/data/database.sql then copy the following code plus the previous SQL CREATE statements to create the tables
CREATE DATABASE mydb;
use mydb;
/* COPY THE PREVIOUS STATEMENTS HERE*/
Now we need to execute this script from PHP. So go ahead and create a file config/install.php then copy the following code:
include_once './dbclass.php';
try
{
$dbclass = new DBClass();
$connection = $dbclass.getConnection();
$sql = file_get_contents("data/database.sql");
$connection->exec($sql);
echo "Database and tables created successfully!";
}
catch(PDOException $e)
{
echo $e->getMessage();
}
We’ll be placing the contents of the config/data/database.sql file into a variable using the file_get_contents() function, and executing it with the exec() function.
You can see the implementation of the DBClass below.
File Structure
Our API project's file structure will be simple. We'll use a config folder for storing the configuration file(s), an entities folder for storing PHP classes that encapsulate the entities used by our API i.e products, locations, families and transactions.
Connecting to A MySQL Database in PHP
Inside the the config folder add a dbclass.php file that contains the following code to connect your API back-end to the underlying MySQL database.
<?php
class DBClass {
private $host = "localhost";
private $username = "root";
private $password = "<YOUR_DB_PASSWORD>";
private $database = "<YOUR_DB_NAME>";
public $connection;
// get the database connection
public function getConnection(){
$this->connection = null;
try{
$this->connection = new PDO("mysql:host=" . $this->host . ";dbname=" . $this->database, $this->username, $this->password);
$this->connection->exec("set names utf8");
}catch(PDOException $exception){
echo "Error: " . $exception->getMessage();
}
return $this->connection;
}
}
?>
What is PDO?
The PHP Data Objects (PDO) extension defines a lightweight, consistent interface for accessing databases in PHP. Each database driver that implements the PDO interface can expose database-specific features as regular extension functions. Note that you cannot perform any database functions using the PDO extension by itself; you must use a database-specific PDO driver to access a database server. Source.
The PDO object will ask for four parameters:
DSN (data source name), which includes type of database, host name, database name (optional) Username to connect to host Password to connect to host Additional options
Next we'll create the PHP classes that encapsulate the entities (or database tables). Each class will contain a hard-coded string storing the name of the corresponding SQL table, a member variable that will be holding an instance of the Connection class which will be passed via the class constructor and other fields mapping to the table columns. Each entity class will also encapsulate the CRUD operations needed for creating, reading, updating and deleting the corresponding table rows.
The Product Class
<?php
class Product{
// Connection instance
private $connection;
// table name
private $table_name = "Product";
// table columns
public $id;
public $sku;
public $barcode;
public $name;
public $price;
public $unit;
public $quantity;
public $minquantity;
public $createdAt;
public $updatedAt;
public $family_id;
public $location_id;
public function __construct($connection){
$this->connection = $connection;
}
//C
public function create(){
}
//R
public function read(){
$query = "SELECT c.name as family_name, p.id, p.sku, p.barcode, p.name, p.price, p.unit, p.quantity , p.minquantity, p.createdAt, p.updatedAt FROM" . $this->table_name . " p LEFT JOIN Family c ON p.family_id = c.id ORDER BY p.createdAt DESC";
$stmt = $this->connection->prepare($query);
$stmt->execute();
return $stmt;
}
//U
public function update(){}
//D
public function delete(){}
}
The Transaction Class
<?php
class Transaction{
// Connection instance
private $connection;
// table name
private $table_name = "Transaction";
// table columns
public $id;
public $comment;
public $price;
public $quantity;
public $reason;
public $createdAt;
public $updatedAt;
public $product_id;
public function __construct($connection){
$this->connection = $connection;
}
//C
public function create(){}
//R
public function read(){}
//U
public function update(){}
//D
public function delete(){}
}
The Family Class
<?php
class Family{
// Connection instance
private $connection;
// table name
private $table_name = "Family";
// table columns
public $id;
public $reference;
public $name;
public $createdAt;
public $updatedAt;
public function __construct($connection){
$this->connection = $connection;
}
//C
public function create(){}
//R
public function read(){}
//U
public function update(){}
//D
public function delete(){}
}
The Location Class
<?php
class Location{
// Connection instance
private $connection;
// table name
private $table_name = "Location";
// table columns
public $id;
public $reference;
public $description;
public $createdAt;
public $updatedAt;
public function __construct($connection){
$this->connection = $connection;
}
//C
public function create(){}
//R
public function read(){}
//U
public function update(){}
//D
public function delete(){}
}
Creating the API Endpoints
We have four entities that we want to CRUD with our API so create four folders products, transactions, families and locations and then in each folder create create.php, read.php, update.php, delete.php.
Implementing products/read.php
Open the products/read.php file then add the following code:
header("Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8");
include_once '../config/dbclass.php';
include_once '../entities/product.php';
$dbclass = new DBClass();
$connection = $dbclass->getConnection();
$product = new Product($connection);
$stmt = $product->read();
$count = $stmt->rowCount();
if($count > 0){
$products = array();
$products["body"] = array();
$products["count"] = $count;
while ($row = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)){
extract($row);
$p = array(
"id" => $id,
"sku" => $sku,
"barcode" => $barcode,
"name" => $name,
"price" => $price,
"unit" => $unit,
"quantity" => $quantity,
"minquantity" => $minquantity,
"createdAt" => $createdAt,
"createdAt" => $createdAt,
"updatedAt" => $updatedAt,
"family_id" => $family_id,
"location_id" => $location_id
);
array_push($products["body"], $p);
}
echo json_encode($products);
}
else {
echo json_encode(
array("body" => array(), "count" => 0);
);
}
?>
Implementing product/create.php
<?php
header("Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8");
header("Access-Control-Allow-Methods: POST");
header("Access-Control-Max-Age: 3600");
header("Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Content-Type, Access-Control-Allow-Headers, Authorization, X-Requested-With");
include_once '../config/dbclass.php';
include_once '../entities/product.php';
$dbclass = new DBClass();
$connection = $dbclass->getConnection();
$product = new Product($connection);
$data = json_decode(file_get_contents("php://input"));
$product->name = $data->name;
$product->price = $data->price;
$product->description = $data->description;
$product->category_id = $data->category_id;
$product->created = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');
if($product->create()){
echo '{';
echo '"message": "Product was created."';
echo '}';
}
else{
echo '{';
echo '"message": "Unable to create product."';
echo '}';
}
?>
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