SymfonyCasts stands united with the people of Ukraine
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Check us out! We now have 3 working endpoints, but one has a big issue. The POST still returns a text string as its response. Even if you don’t know what it should return, that’s embarassing. Come on, we can do better!
After creating a resource, one great option is to return a representation of the new resource. Use the serializeProgrammer to get JSON and put it into the Response:
// src/KnpU/CodeBattle/Controller/Api/ProgrammerController.php
// ...
public function newAction(Request $request)
{
// ...
$this->save($programmer);
$data = $this->serializeProgrammer($programmer);
$response = new Response(
json_encode($data),
201
);
$programmerUrl = $this->generateUrl(
'api_programmers_show',
['nickname' => $programmer->nickname]
);
$response->headers->set('Location', $programmerUrl);
$response->headers->set('Content-Type', 'application/json');
return $response;
}
If the client needs that information, then we’ve just saved them one API request.
And don’t forget to set the Content-Type response header to application/json. To see your handy work, print out that response temporarily and try it:
// testing.php
// ...
// 1) Create a programmer resource
$request = $client->post('/api/programmers', null, json_encode($data));
$response = $request->send();
echo $response;
echo "\n\n";die;
And actually, since returning JSON is so common, Silex has a shortcut: the JsonResponse class. It takes care of running json_encode and setting the Content-Type header for us – double threat!:
// src/KnpU/CodeBattle/Controller/Api/ProgrammerController.php
// ...
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\JsonResponse;
public function newAction(Request $request)
{
// ...
$this->save($programmer);
$data = $this->serializeProgrammer($programmer);
$response = new JsonResponse($data, 201);
$programmerUrl = $this->generateUrl(
'api_programmers_show',
['nickname' => $programmer->nickname]
);
$response->headers->set('Location', $programmerUrl);
return $response;
}
That’s just there for convenience, but it cuts down on some code. If your framework or application doesn’t have anything like this, create a class or function to help with this: it will go a long way towards following our favorite motto: be consistent.
By the way, how do I know these rules, like that a 201 response should have a Location header or that it should return the entity body? These guidelines come from the IETF and the W3C in the form of big technical documents called RFC’s. They’re not always easy to interpret, but sometimes they’re awesome. For example, if you google for http status 201 you’ll find the famous RFC 2616, which gives us the details about the 201 status code and most of the underlying guidelines for how HTTP works.
I’ll help you navigate these rules. But as we go, try googling for answers and seeing what’s out there. Some RFC’s, like 2616, are older and well adopted. Others are still up for comment and being interpreted. Some of which we’ll cover later.
Hey Scott! It's working again - we had a temporary video outage because our video host (Vimeo) themselves had an outage. Better now - sorry about that!
// composer.json
{
"require": {
"silex/silex": "~1.0", // v1.3.2
"symfony/twig-bridge": "~2.1", // v2.7.3
"symfony/security": "~2.4", // v2.7.3
"doctrine/dbal": "^2.5.4", // v2.5.4
"monolog/monolog": "~1.7.0", // 1.7.0
"symfony/validator": "~2.4", // v2.7.3
"symfony/expression-language": "~2.4" // v2.7.3
},
"require-dev": {
"behat/mink": "~1.5", // v1.5.0
"behat/mink-goutte-driver": "~1.0.9", // v1.0.9
"behat/mink-selenium2-driver": "~1.1.1", // v1.1.1
"behat/behat": "~2.5", // v2.5.5
"behat/mink-extension": "~1.2.0", // v1.2.0
"phpunit/phpunit": "~5.7.0", // 5.7.27
"guzzle/guzzle": "~3.7" // v3.9.3
}
}
There is an error: The video could not be loaded, either because the server or network failed or because the format is not supported.