1. API Development Becoming the Platform (CakePHP for Back-End Development or Cake for Web Services) By Andrew Curioso CakeFest 2010

2. Introduction Yesterday: Designing CakePHP plug-ins for consuming APIs Today: Create your own API Basic setup Extras

3. Become a platform Be “a” platform A blog is a platform

4. Become a platform Internal only (closed) Multi-platform (consumers) Scalable External (open) Everything + Growth Mash-ups! Innovation Evangelists “The Platform Play”

5. Who’s already a platform Google Facebook Digg Twitter Yahoo BOSS / Flickr / Delicious / etc. Salesforce Ebay Amazon Gowalla FourSquare Bit.ly Paypal Authorize.net Etc…

6. Types of APIs Patterns Representation State Transfer (REST) Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) Protocols / Formats XML JSON YAML AMF Etc...

7. RESTful Representational State Transfer Resource based (nouns) 5 verbs GET PUT POST DELETE HEAD Easy in CakePHP

8. Today’s App URL shortening website User authentication (simple) Create, read, update, and delete (CRUD)

9. Models id user_id url created modified users urls

10. Making it RESTful APP/config/routes.php Router::mapResource(‘users’) Source: http://book.cakephp.org/view/1239/The-Simple-Setup

12. Mapping Extensions Router::parseExtensions() RequestHandler component Switches layouts / views Includes helpers Parses incoming XML on POST Router::connect( "/:controller/:id”, array ("action" => "edit", "[method]" => "PUT"), array("id" => "[0-9]+”) ); Source: http://book.cakephp.org/view/1240/Custom-REST-Routing

13. Json View Simple Fast Wide-spread <?php echo json_encode( $url ); ?> APP/views/urls/json/view.ctp

14. JsonP P w/ padding Uses callback Cross domain <?php if ( $callbackFunc !== false ) echo $callbackFunc.'('; echo $content_for_layout; if ( $callbackFunc ) echo $callbackFunc.')'; ?> function beforeFilter() { if ( array_key_exists('callback’, $this->params[‘url’]) ) $this->set(‘callbackFunc’, $this->params[‘url’][‘callback’]); else $this->set(‘callbackFunc’, false); } APP/views/layouts/json/default.ctp APP/app_controller.php

15. XML View Strongly Typed Human readable Lots of existing tools <? echo ‘<url>’; echo $xml->serialize( $url ); echo ‘<url>’; ?> APP/views/urls/xml/view.ctp

16. Other Views Human Readable XML Json / JsonP HTML YAML CSV Serialized PHP Etc… Binary AMF Microsoft Excel PDF JPEG / PNG Etc…

17. Testing It Out Using cURL Create curl –d “url=www.example.com” http://tinyr.me/urls.json Read curl http://tinyr.me/urls/123.json Update curl –d “url=www.example.com/foo” http://tinyr.me/urls/123.json Delete curl –X DELETE http://tinyr.me/urls/123.json

18. Done? We have MVC files RESTful Views XML Json / JsonP We’re missing Error handling Pagination Authentication Authorization Documentation

19. Status Codes Success 200 OK * 201 Created * 303 See Other * Error 401 Unauthorized * 402 Payment Required 403 Forbidden * 404 Not Found * Error (continued) 405 Method Not Allowed * 409 Conflict 410 Gone 500 Internal Server Error 501 Not Implemented 503 Service Unavailable

20. Add Method If not a POST request 405 Method Not Allowed Already existed 303 See Other Save success 201 Created Failure 200 OK with explanation

21. Edit Method If not a POST or PUT request 405 Method Not Allowed Invalid ID 404 File Not Found Success 200 OK Failure 200 OK with explanation

22. Delete Method If not a POST or DELETE request 405 Method Not Allowed Invalid ID 404 File Not Found Success 200 OK Failure 200 OK with explanation

23. Global User is not allowed to access resource 403 Forbidden User is not logged in 401 Unauthorized

24. Throwing Errors Same format Descriptive Human Computer Comprehensive

25. Implementation function your_action() { … $this->_userError(404); … } APP/controllers/your_controller.php function _userError( $code, $options=array() ) { $codes = array( 402 => 'Payment Required', … ); $this->header("HTTP/1.1 {$type} {$codes[$type]}"); $this->cakeError('error'.$type, array( array( 'options' => $options ) ) ); } APP/app_controller.php

26. Implementation {"Error": { "code" : 404, "description" : "File Not Found" }} APP/views/errors/error404.ctp

27. HTTP Headers Return meta-information Rate limiting Pagination Etc.

28. Pagination Uses HTTP headers App defined start with “X-” function paginate($object=NULL, $scope=array(), $whitelist=array() ) { $data = parent::paginate($object,$scope,$whitelist); // … messy code to get the object … $this->header('X-Current-Page: '.((int)$this->params['paging'][$object->alias]['page'])); $this->header('X-Page-Limit: '.((int)$this->params['paging'][$object->alias]['options']['limit'])); $this->header('X-Page-Total: '.((int)$this->params['paging'][$object->alias]['count'])); return $data; } APP/app_controller.php

29. Multi-Platform Dev Use a UI that makes sense Bring something to the table

30. Platform Support Web Browsers Do not support: DELETE PUT Fortunately Cake… Let’s you do this: _method=DELETE

31. Platform Support DELETE /urls/123.json HTTP1.1 Host: www.example.com POST /urls/123.json HTTP1.1 Host: www.example.com _method=DELETE

32. Authentication

33. Authorization There is no magic One or more: user_id Administrator Moderator

34. Documentation Vocabularies / Schemas DTD or schema files Examples Code I/O Community Feedback

35. What about SOAP and AMF? CakePHP rocks with REST SOAP is heavy AMF is light but requires Flash But, if you still want to, you can

36. Flow for SOAP and AMF

37. Example Flow Router UrlsController AmfController User POST ::gateway() ::view() Return data Format envelope

38. Some final words…

39. Don’t Choose Views are easy

40. API Developers Checklist Documentation Example code Definition files (if applicable) Unit tests

41. Finding the code MIT License http://tinyr.me

42. Happy Aniversary Happy anniversary, Laura. 1 year: Sept. 5, 2010

43. Andrew Curioso Contact: www.AndrewCurioso.com/contact @AndrewCurioso on Twitter