Symfony RESTful API example

In this post we are going to create RESTfull APIs using PHP framework Symfony 3. This will be exemplified on a “Car” entity.

1. Creating Symfony Application

First make sure you have composer globally installed and then run the next command that will install the latest version of Symfony:

composer create-project symfony/framework-standard-edition my_project

2. Bundles configuration

To implement the web services you will need the following 3 bundles: JMSSerializerBundle, FOSRestBundle, NelmioApiDocBundle. Run the commands from below:

composer require jms/serializer-bundle
composer require friendsofsymfony/rest-bundle
composer require nelmio/api-doc-bundle

After installing them using composer, the 3 bundles must be included in AppKernel.php.

public function registerBundles()
    {
        $bundles = array(
            // ...
            new Nelmio\ApiDocBundle\NelmioApiDocBundle(),
	        new JMS\SerializerBundle\JMSSerializerBundle(),
	        new FOS\RestBundle\FOSRestBundle(),
        );

        // ...
   }

The next thing to do is register the route for the NelmioBundle in app/config/routing.yml.

NelmioApiDocBundle:
    resource: "@NelmioApiDocBundle/Resources/config/routing.yml"
    prefix:   /api

Now the bundles configurations must be enabled in app/config/config.yml.

nelmio_api_doc:
    sandbox:
        accept_type: "application/json"
        body_format:
            default_format: "json"

fos_rest:
    param_fetcher_listener: true
    body_listener: true
    routing_loader:
            default_format: json
            include_format: false
    view:
        view_response_listener: true

This configuration is for minimal usage. For more options,please visit the following websites: FOSRestBundle and NelmioApiDocBundle

3. Creating new bundle (CarBundle)

To create a bundle run the next command and follow the installation steps:

php app/console generate:bundle.

As we said this tutorial is based on a “Car” entity. So we need a class “Car” in Entity folder.

namespace CarBundle\Entity;

use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;

/**
 * @ORM\Table(name="cars")
 * @ORM\Entity
 */
class Car
{
    /**
     * @ORM\Column(type="integer")
     * @ORM\Id
     * @ORM\GeneratedValue(strategy="AUTO")
     */
    private $id;

    /**
     * @ORM\Column(type="string", length=35)
     */
    private $brand;
}

As you can see, Doctrine is used to map the Entitiy to the car table.
The next step is to create a controller (CarController) and register the route in Resources/config/routing.yml.

namespace CarBundle\Controller;

use Sensio\Bundle\FrameworkExtraBundle\Configuration\Route;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\Controller;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;
use FOS\RestBundle\View\View;
use FOS\RestBundle\Request\ParamFetcher;
use FOS\RestBundle\Controller\Annotations as Rest;
use Nelmio\ApiDocBundle\Annotation\ApiDoc;

class CarController extends Controller
{

/**
     * List cars.
     *
     * @Rest\Get("/cars")
     * @Rest\View
     *
     * @ApiDoc(
     *   section="cars",
     *   description="List cars",
     *   statusCodes={
     *     200="Returned when successful",
     *     404="Not found"
     *   }
     * )
     * 
     * @return mixed
     */
    public function getCarsAction()
    {                                                           
            $cars = $this->getDoctrine()
                ->getRepository('CarBundle:Car')
                ->findAll();

            return View::create(array("cars" => $cars), 200);
    }
}

“getCarsAction()” method returns all records coresponding to Car entity. The web service that callls the method has the route “/cars”.

Resources/config/routing.yml

Cars:
    type: rest
    prefix: /v1
    resource: CarBundle\Controller\CarController

Finally you can see the result in the following image where the webservice is tested and returns a JSON response:

We hope this helps you. Good luck.