Vue-PHP

This is a REST api approach to link Vue and PHP suitable for smaller projects when a framework is overkill or when you just dig doing it yourself.

Axios plugin

A plugin wraps Axios and exposes the following methods on a Vue instance:

this.$get()
this.$post()
this.$put()
this.$delete()

Each takes the following arguments in the following order:

type	description	required
string	route	yes
function	success callback	no
object	post payload or query params	no
function	error callback	no

A simple example in a Vue instance might read

data: function() {
  return {
    chairs: [],
  };
},
methods: {
  setChairs: function(res) {
    this.chairs = res;
  }
},
created: function() {
  this.$get('products/chairs', this.setChairs);
}

This would get all the chairs (explained below) and set the response data on the chairs array.

A more involved request might read

methods: {
  updateChairs: function(res) {
    this.chairs = res;
  },
  handleError: function(err) {
    this.message = err;
  }
},
created: function() {
  this.$put(
    'products/chairs/42',
    this.addMessage,
    {name: 'Nice Chair'},
    this.handleError
  );
}

This updates the name of chair with id 42 to 'Nice Chair', hands the appropriate callback the response data (success or error; explained below) and executes it.

Route string

Each call needs a route, which is the path leading to the controller class under App/Http/Controllers.

For example, a class at App/Http/Controllers/Products titled 'Chair.php', is accessed as

'products/chairs'

Edge cases occur, e.g. class Cactus is found by route

'desert/plants/catctuss'

but this structure eliminates the need to explicitly define controllers.

The type of route determines the controller function to be called. There are five options:

Method	Route	Controller Method
GET	products/chairs	all()
GET	products/chairs/42	get()
POST	products/chairs	post()
PUT	products/chairs/42	update()
DELETE	products/chairs/42	destroy()

Controllers

Controllers are classes that live in App/Http/Controllers. Construct routes to account for directory structures.

Route	Path to class
users	Controllers/User.php
products/chairs	Controllers/Products/Chair.php

A skeleton constructor class might read as

class Book {

  public function all($req, $res) {

  }

  public function get($req, $res) {

  }

  public function post($req, $res) {

  }

  public function update($req, $res) {

  }

  public function destroy($req, $res) {

  }

}

As noted in the above chart, controller methods are called based on the route passed.

Request and Response objects

Public controller methods are injected with a Request and a Response object. They expose the following to the methods:

Object	Key	Type	Purpose
Request	post	object	post payload
Request	params	object	query params
Request	itemId	int	id for item when last route fragment is an int
Response	success	boolean	indicate success or error
Response	data	any	data to be returned from response
Response	message	string	error message

Basically, the controller methods read relevant data from the request, process it, and issue a response containing any data on success or a string message on error. The methods must explicitly set success = true, as the default is false. A request that reads

'products/chairs/42'

will call the get() method in Products\Chair.php. The method is interested in $req->itemId, which is 42.

namespace App\Http\Controllers\Products;

use App\Database\DB;

class Chair {

  public function get($req, $res) {

    $db = new DB();
    $query = $db->get('chairs', $req->itemId);
    $res->data = $query->results;
    $res->success = true;

  }

}

Not Included

BYODB! Bring your own database, validations, and middleware.

Etc

The axios object is also set on the Vue instance as

this.$axios()

for use with other services.

Install

To use the PHP server, just npm install && npm start. Open a Chrome window and, with the network tab open on the dev tools, head to localhost:4242 and view the requests from the created hook in Home.vue.

Otherwise, npm install && npm run build and serve as you like.

The included build setup is for Browserify. If you've only used webpack, watchify is Browserify's hot reloader. Just npm run watch to enable it.