Content Negotiation

The API system has built-in content negotiation capabilities. It leverages the willdurand/negotiation library.

By default, only the JSON-LD format is enabled. However API Platform Core supports many more formats and can be extended.

The framework natively supports JSON-LD, GraphQL, JSONAPI, HAL, raw JSON, XML, YAML and CSV (YAML and CSV support is only available if you use Symfony 3.2+).

Both XML and JSON formats are experimental and there are no assurance that we will not break them.

API Platform Core will automatically detect the best resolving format depending on:

enabled formats (see below)
the requested format, specified in either the Accept HTTP header or as an extension appended to the URL

Available formats are:

Format	Format name	MIME types	Backward Compatibility guaranteed
JSON-LD	`jsonld`	`application/ld+json`	yes
GraphQL	n/a	n/a	yes
JSONAPI	`jsonapi`	`application/vnd.api+json`	yes
HAL	`jsonhal`	`application/hal+json`	yes
JSON	`json`	`application/json`	no
XML	`xml`	`application/xml`, `text/xml`	no
YAML	`yaml`	`application/x-yaml`	no
CSV	`csv`	`text/csv`	no
HTML (API docs)	`html`	`text/html`	no

If the client requested format is not specified (if it’s not supported, it will throw an HTTP bad request error), the response format will be the first format defined in the formats configuration key (see below). An example using the built-in XML support is available in Behat specs.

The API Platform content negotiation system is extendable. Support for other formats can be added by creating and registering appropriate encoders and, sometimes, normalizers. Adding support for other standard hypermedia formats upstream is welcome. Don’t hesitate to contribute by adding your encoders and normalizers to API Platform Core.

# Enabling Several Formats

The first required step is to configure allowed formats. The following configuration will enable the support of XML (built-in) and of a custom format called myformat and having application/vnd.myformat as MIME type.

# api/config/packages/api_platform.yaml
api_platform:
    # ...

    formats:
        jsonld:   ['application/ld+json']
        jsonhal:  ['application/hal+json']
        jsonapi:  ['application/vnd.api+json']
        json:     ['application/json']
        xml:      ['application/xml', 'text/xml']
        yaml:     ['application/x-yaml']
        csv:      ['text/csv']
        html:     ['text/html']
        myformat: ['application/vnd.myformat']

To enable GraphQL support, read the dedicated chapter.

Because the Symfony Serializer component is able to serialize objects in XML, sending an Accept HTTP header with the text/xml string as value is enough to retrieve XML documents from our API. However API Platform knows nothing about the myformat format. We need to register an encoder and optionally a normalizer for this format.

# Enabling Additional Formats On a Specific Resource/Operation

Support for specific formats can also be added at resource or operation level, using the formats attribute.

<?php
// api/src/Entity/Book.php

namespace App\Entity;

/**
 * @ApiResource(attributes={"formats"={"xml", "jsonld", "csv"={"text/csv"}}})
 */
class Book
{
    // ...
}

In the example above, xml or jsonld will be allowed and there is no need to specify the mime types as they are already defined in the configuration. Additionally the csv format is added with the mime type text/csv.

It is also important to notice that the usage of this attribute will override the formats defined in the configuration, therefore this configuration might disable the json or the html on this resource for example.

You can specify different accepted formats at operation level too:

<?php
// api/src/Entity/Book.php

namespace App\Entity;

/**
 * @ApiResource(
*      collectionOperations={"get"={"formats"={"xml"={"text/xml"}}}},
*      attributes={"formats"={"jsonld", "csv"={"text/csv"}}}
*  )
 */
class Book
{
    // ...
}

As an alternative to annotations, you can also use XML or YAML, the example above would become:

XML:

<resources xmlns="https://api-platform.com/schema/metadata"
           xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
           xsi:schemaLocation="https://api-platform.com/schema/metadata
           https://api-platform.com/schema/metadata/metadata-2.0.xsd">
    <resource class="App\Entity\Greeting">
        <collectionOperations>
            <collectionOperation name="get">
                <attribute name="formats">
                    <attribute name="xml">
                        <attribute>text/xml</attribute>
                    </attribute>
                    <!-- works also with <attribute name="xml">text/xml</attribute> -->
                </attribute>
            </collectionOperation>
        </collectionOperations>

        <attribute name="formats">
            <attribute>jsonld</attribute> <!-- format already defined in the config -->
            <attribute name="csv">text/csv</attribute>
        </attribute>
    </resource>
</resources>

YAML:

resources:
    App\Entity\Book:
        collectionOperations:
            get:
                formats:
                    xml: ['text/xml'] # works also with "text/html"
        attributes:
            formats:
               0: 'jsonld' # format already defined in the config
               csv: 'text/csv'

# Registering a Custom Serializer

If you are adding support for a format not supported by default by API Platform nor by the Symfony Serializer Component, you need to create custom encoder, decoder and eventually a normalizer and a denormalizer. Refer to the Symfony documentation to learn how to create and register such classes.

API Platform Core will automatically call the serializer with your defined format name (myformat in previous examples) as format parameter during the deserialization process. Then it will return the result to the client with the asked MIME type using its built-in responder.

# Writing a Custom Normalizer

Using composition is the recommended way to implement a custom normalizer. You can use the following template to start with your own implementation of CustomItemNormalizer:

# api/config/services.yaml
services:
    'App\Serializer\CustomItemNormalizer':
        arguments: [ '@api_platform.serializer.normalizer.item' ]
        # Uncomment if you don't use the autoconfigure feature
        #tags: [ 'serializer.normalizer' ]
    
    # ...

<?php
// api/src/Serializer/CustomItemNormalizer.php

namespace App\Serializer;

use Symfony\Component\Serializer\Normalizer\DenormalizerInterface;
use Symfony\Component\Serializer\Normalizer\NormalizerInterface;

final class CustomItemNormalizer implements NormalizerInterface, DenormalizerInterface
{
    private $normalizer;

    public function __construct(NormalizerInterface $normalizer)
    {
        if (!$normalizer instanceof DenormalizerInterface) {
            throw new \InvalidArgumentException('The normalizer must implement the DenormalizerInterface');
        }

        $this->normalizer = $normalizer;
    }

    public function denormalize($data, $class, $format = null, array $context = [])
    {
        return $this->normalizer->denormalize($data, $class, $format, $context);
    }

    public function supportsDenormalization($data, $type, $format = null)
    {
        return $this->normalizer->supportsDenormalization($data, $type, $format);
    }

    public function normalize($object, $format = null, array $context = [])
    {
        return $this->normalizer->normalize($object, $format, $context);
    }

    public function supportsNormalization($data, $format = null)
    {
        return $this->normalizer->supportsNormalization($data, $format);
    }
}

For example if you want to make the csv format work for even complex entities with a lot of hierarchy, you have to flatten or remove too complex relations:

<?php
// api/src/Serializer/CustomItemNormalizer.php

namespace App\Serializer;

use Symfony\Component\Serializer\Normalizer\DenormalizerInterface;
use Symfony\Component\Serializer\Normalizer\NormalizerInterface;

class CustomItemNormalizer implements NormalizerInterface, DenormalizerInterface
{
    // ...

    public function normalize($object, $format = null, array $context = [])
    {
        $result = $this->normalizer->normalize($object, $format, $context);

        if ('csv' !== $format || !is_array($result)) {
            return $result;
        }

        foreach ($result as $key => $value) {
            if (is_array($value) && array_keys(array_keys($value)) === array_keys($value)) {
                unset($result[$key]);
            }
        }

        return $result;
    }

    // ...
}

Content Negotiation

Table of Contents

# Enabling Several Formats

# Enabling Additional Formats On a Specific Resource/Operation

# Registering a Custom Serializer

# Writing a Custom Normalizer