API Platform's Philosophy
In 20 years of PHP, the web changed dramatically and is now evolving faster than ever:
- Now that they are indexed by Google and thanks to awesome frontend technologies such as AngularJS or React, full-Javascript webapps are becoming the standard.
- Since 2014 internet users spend more time on their mobile devices than on desktops: having a responsive website is mandatory and native mobile apps are a must-have.
- The semantic web and especially Linked Data is a reality: with the Schema.org initiative and new open web standards such as JSON-LD, search engines (among a bunch of other services and softwares) consume structured and machine-readable data at web scale. Not exposing such data decrease interoperability and search engine ranking/efficiency (think rich snippets).
PHP.net, Symfony, Facebook and many others have worked hard to improve and professionalize the PHP ecosystem. The PHP world has closed the gap with most backend solutions and is often more innovative than them.
However in critical area I've described previously, many things can be improved. Almost all existing solutions are still designed and documented to create websites the old way: a server generates then sends plain-old HTML documents to browsers.
API Platform is a set of tools for building modern web projects. It is a framework for API-first projects built on top of Symfony. Like other modern frameworks such as Zend Framework and Symfony, it's both a full-stack all-in-one framework and a set of independent PHP components and bundles that can be used separately.
The architecture promoted by the framework will distrust many of you but read this tutorial until the end and you will see how API Platform make modern development easy and fun again:
- Start by creating a hypermedia REST API exposing structured data that can be understood by any compliant client such your apps but also as search engines (JSON-LD with Schema.org vocabulary). This API is the central and unique entry point to access and modify data. It also encapsulates the whole business logic.
- Then create as many clients as you want using frontend technologies you love: an HTML5/Javascript webapp querying the API in AJAX (of course) but also a native iOS or Android app, or even a desktop application. Clients only display data and forms.
The Distribution: Create Powerful APIs with Ease
The API Component
- General Design Considerations
- Configuration
- Overriding Default Order
- The Serialization Process
- Overall Process
- Available Serializers
- The Serialization Context, Groups and Relations
- Using Serialization Groups
- Using Serialization Groups per Operation
- Changing the Serialization Context Dynamically
- Changing the Serialization Context on a Per-item Basis
- Name Conversion
- Decorating a Serializer and Adding Extra Data
- Entity Identifier Case
- Embedding the JSON-LD Context
- The Event System
- Using External Vocabularies
- Extending JSON-LD context
- NelmioApiDocBundle Integration
The Schema Generator Component
- Configuration
- Customizing PHP Namespaces
- Forcing a Field Range
- Forcing a Field Cardinality
- Forcing a Relation Table Name
- Forcing (or Disabling) a Class Parent
- Forcing a Class to be Abstract
- Forcing a Nullable Property
- Forcing a Unique Property
- Making a Property Read Only
- Making a Property Write Only
- Forcing a Property to be in a Serialization Group
- Forcing an Embeddable Class to be Embedded
- Author PHPDoc
- Disabling Generators and Creating Custom Ones
- Skipping Accessor Method Generation
- Disabling the id Generator
- Generating UUIDs
- User submitted UUIDs
- Generating Custom IDs
- Disabling Usage of Doctrine Collection
- Changing the Field Visibility
- Generating @Assert\Type Annotations
- Forcing Doctrine Inheritance Mapping Annotation
- Interfaces and Doctrine Resolve Target Entity Listener
- Custom Schemas
- Checking GoodRelation Compatibility
- PHP File Header
- Full Configuration Reference
The Admin Component
The Client Generator Component
Deployment