RESTConnection is a PHP class used to make requests to REST APIs easily
The process is as follow :
-
instantiate a RESTConnection object, passing it the general parameters to connect to the REST api of your choice. ie : base url to the service, credentials, headers (to specify sent and accepted content types for example)
-
Use the method "request()" to send a request to this api, using parameters : url path, (optional) data to send, and method (verb, ie : get, post, put...) to use.
-
Get the resulting http status code, body, header, error message
Altough RESTConnection supports most used http verbs (get, post, put, delete, patch), you might be in a situation where only get/post are supported (your firewall might block other verbs). In that case, you can set the compatibilityMode to true. Then, every delete, put, patch verb will be passed as a POST and a special header X-HTTP-Method-Override will be added. On another hand, you also might want to force this for one specific request. Think of google translate, that usually takes the word to translate as a GET. If you want to transalte a whole paragraph you'll have to pass it as a POST and force the X-HTTP-Method-Override to GET. You can do this easily, by just adding a overriding verb to the request parameters list.
// Initialize the header of our future requests, specifying the format we want to use in request and response (json)
$requestHeader = array('Accept: application/json', 'Content-Type: application/json');
// Create the RESTConnection object, for now, no credential needed as we get only public tweets
$testAPI = new RESTConnection('https://api.twitter.com/1/', $requestHeader);
// Issue a GET request on 'https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/public_timeline.json'
if($testAPI->request('statuses/public_timeline.json'))
{
// Display the tweets
var_dump(json_decode($testAPI->getResponseBody(), true));
}
else
{
// Something went wrong
var_dump($testAPI->getLastError());
}// Initialize the header of our future requests, specifying the format we want to use in request and response (json)
$requestHeader = array('Accept: application/json', 'Content-Type: application/json');
// Create the RESTConnection object, this time, credential are specified
$testAPI = new RESTConnection('https://your.campfirenow.com/', $requestHeader, 'your_token_here', 'X');
// Issue a POST request on 'https://your.campfirenow.com/room/your_room_id/speak.json'
if($testAPI->request('room/your_room_id/speak.json', json_encode(array('message' => array('body' => "Hello"))), RESTConnection::POST)))
{
// lastStatusCode should be 201
var_dump($testAPI->getLastStatusCode());
// Response body contains the message id
$result = (json_decode($testAPI->getResponseBody(), true));
// star the message
$messageid = $result['message']['id'];
$testAPI->request(sprintf('messages/%s/star.json', $messageid), array(), RESTConnection::POST);
// unstar it
// $testAPI->request(sprintf('messages/%s/star.json', $messageid), array(), RESTConnection::DELETE);
}
else
{
// Something went wrong
var_dump($testAPI->getLastError());
}
// Issue a PUT request on 'https://your.campfirenow.com/room/your_room_id.json'
$testAPI->request('room/your_room_id.json', json_encode(array('room' => array('topic' => "this room is not about cats"))), RESTConnection::PUT);This code is partially based on this article : http://www.gen-x-design.com/archives/making-restful-requests-in-php/. Thanks to its author.