Creating a web service in PHP

Question

I would like to create a web service in PHP which can be consumed by different consumers (Web page, Android device, iOS device).

I come from a Microsoft background so am confortable in how I would do it in C# etc. Ideally I would like to be able to provide a REST service which can send JSON.

Can you let me know how I can achieve this in PHP?

Thanks

Tariq

Solution

I developed a class that is the PHP native SoapServer class' REST equivalent.

You just include the RestServer.php file and then use it as follows.

class Hello
{
  public static function sayHello($name)
  {
    return "Hello, " . $name;
  }
}

$rest = new RestServer(Hello);
$rest->handle();

Then you can make calls from another language like this:

http://myserver.com/path/to/api?method=sayHello&name=World

(Note that it doesn't matter what order the params are provided in the query string. Also, the param key names as well as the method name are case-insensitive.)

Get it here.

Comments

[Tariq]

Thanks. That is a good starter for me. I started looking at frameworks and came across FRAPI but this does not seem to be actively developed. I will take a look at CakePHP

[Jake Sankey]

Thanks! I recently posted the RestServer class on GitHub and made some further improvements! (The link above will take you to my blog post about it with the GitHub link)

[Mr. Lance E Sloan]

Looks great. I'll have to give that a try. I wonder why neither the PHP standard library nor PEAR have a class to support REST.