RestBase

A simple PHP base class for quick and painless REST clients. RestBase uses Guzzle to handle the actual HTTP call and allows you to focus on just the details of the particular REST endpoint.

The compositional nature of the subclasses allows for elegant application of the DRY principle, where each REST endpoint request is a small class detailing only the nature of the exact request.

Easy to use

Below is a sample class for retrieving a list of repositories using the Github API for a particular user.

<?php

class GithubReposRequest extends \DanBruce\RestBase\AbstractRestRequest
{
    private $user;

    public function __construct($user)
    {
        $this->user = $user;
    }

    protected function getHttpVerb()
    {
        return self::HTTP_VERB_GET;
    }

    protected function getUrl()
    {
        return sprintf(
            'https://api.github.com/users/%s/repos',
            $this->user
        );
    }

    protected function getOptions()
    {
        return []; // defaults are fine
    }
}
?>

And to use the class:

<?php
$request = new GithubReposRequest('danbruce');
$repositories = $request->makeRequest();
?>

Three simple methods

Subclasses of the AbstractRestRequest must only implement three methods, most of which return simple constant strings.

• getHttpVerb: the HTTP verb (get, post, put, delete, etc) to use in the request
• getUrl: the URL to use in the request (e.g. https://api.github.com/users/danbruce/repos)
• getOptions: the options to hand off to the Guzzle client when making the request (if not required, an empty array will suffice)

Due to the compositional design of the subclasses, it is easy to reduce the amount of repeated code with additional object hierarchy on top of AbstractRestRequest.

As an example, we can add an AbstractGithubApiRequest class that assumes requests use the HTTP verb GET and that the requests can use the default set of options. Furthermore, the getUrl method will return a base URL that can be reused in all subclasses. We can then rewrite GithubReposRequest to be even smaller with less code.

<?php

class AbstractGithubApiRequest extends \DanBruce\RestBase\AbstractRestRequest
{
    protected function getHttpVerb()
    {
        return self::HTTP_VERB_GET;
    }

    protected function getUrl()
    {
        return 'https://api.github.com';
    }

    protected function getOptions()
    {
        return [];
    }
}

class GithubReposRequest extends AbstractGithubApiRequest
{
    private $user;

    public function __construct($user)
    {
        $this->user = $user;
    }

    protected function getUrl()
    {
        return sprintf(
            '%s/users/%s/repos',
            parent::getUrl(),
            $this->user
        );
    }
}