Symfony2 REST

Recently I started to write web services in my Symfony2 project that will provide JSON data for using with mobile and other devices that will consume that.

On the mobile side, RESTKIT will be used to connect to my services, and on my (web) side I used Symfony2 (of course).

So, let’s write a simple web service:

First of all, define route to choosen controller that will handle requests and responses from our web service:

_api_v1_get_user_locations:
    pattern:  /v1/locations/{_locale}.{_format}
    defaults: { _controller: SurgeworksApiBundle:Locations:getUserLocations, _format: json, _locale: en}
    requirements:
      _method:  GET
      _format: JSON

As you can see, I defined GET method in router. Locale is used for Symfony2 translator to localize response messages, but this is out of bounds of this article, and default_format is set to be JSON (for now). Format could be anything, later maybe I will implement XML response, but for now, this is enough.

Let’s make our controller:

//Surgeworks\ApiBundle\Controller\LocationsController.php
 
//...
 
    public function getUserLocationsAction() {
 
        //My symfony2 service for getting data from database and making
        //php array of it
        $result = $this->get('surgeworks_core.api')->getUserLocations();
 
        //Just convert array to JSON and return result
        return new Response(json_encode(array('locations' => $result)));
    }
 
//...

//Helloworld example
 
//Surgeworks\ApiBundle\Controller\HelloWorldController
 
public function getHelloWorldAction() {
 
$helloworld = array('hello' => 'world');
 
return new Response(json_encode(array('message' => $helloworld)));
}

That was example of GET method used. For POST, PUT and DELETE actions, principle is same, jut make sure to define required methods inside routing.yml file and make controller that will accept data provided, handle it and return wanted type of response (XML, JSON …)