PHP REST Clients

Question

I'm trying to connect to a RESTful web service, but I'm having some troubles, especially when sending data over PUT and DELETE. With cURL, PUT requires a file to send, and DELETE is just weird. I'm perfectly capable of writing a client using PHP's socket support and writing the HTTP headers myself, but I wanted to know whether you guys have ever used or seen a REST client for PHP?

Solution 1

So as it turns out, Zend_Rest_Client isn't a REST client at all — it does not support the PUT and DELETE methods for example. After trying to kludge it into working with an actual RESTful service I got fed up and wrote a proper REST client for PHP:

http://github.com/educoder/pest

It's still missing a few things but if it gets picked up I'll put some more work into it.

Here's a usage example with the OpenStreetMap REST service:

<?php

/**
 * This PestXML usage example pulls data from the OpenStreetMap API.
 * (see http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/API_v0.6)
 **/

require_once 'PestXML.php';

$pest = new PestXML('http://api.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6');

// Retrieve map data for the University of Toronto campus
$map = $pest->get('/map?bbox=-79.39997,43.65827,-79.39344,43.66903');

// Print all of the street names in the map
$streets = $map->xpath('//way/tag[@k="name"]');
foreach ($streets as $s) {
  echo $s['v'] . "\n";
}

?>

Currently it uses curl but I may switch it to HTTP_Request or HTTP_Request2 down the line.

Update: Looks like quite a few people have jumped on this. Pest now has support for HTTP authentication and a bunch of other features thanks to contributors on GitHub.

Solution 2

I wrote a PHP HTTP client called Guzzle. Guzzle is an HTTP client and framework for building REST webservice clients. You can find more information about Guzzle on its website, or go straight to the source on github: https://github.com/guzzle/guzzle

Guzzle provides goodies that most HTTP clients provide (a simpler interface, all of the HTTP methods, and viewing the request/response), but also provides other advanced features:

• streaming entity bodies
• exponential backoff
• a built-in caching forward proxy
• cookies
• logging
• managed persistent connections
• parallel requests
• OAuth
• a plugin architecture that allows you to implement arbitrary authentication schemes
• Autogenerating a Client API from a JSON service description file

The only drawback: It requires PHP 5.3.3

Solution 3

I tend to just use PHP's built-in cURL support. The CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST option allows you to do PUT/DELETE etc.

Solution 4

I wasn't able to find elegant solution for a long time, didn't like cURL implementations, came up with my own. It supports HTTP authentication, redirects, PUT, etc. because it relies on pecl http module.

Implementation is nice and simple, easy to extend.

• https://github.com/shurikk/rest-client-php

More information can be found here:

• http://pecl.php.net/package/pecl_http
• http://www.php.net/manual/en/http.request.options.php

Solution 5

I've had good success with Zend Rest Client

View more solutions

Comments

[Matt Zukowski]

Zend_Rest_Client isn't really a REST client at all... more like RPC over HTTP or something.

[Jamie Rumbelow]

Ahh, very nice Matt. Thanks for sharing that.

[rtacconi]

I think Zend has the wrong idea of what REST is. I confirm Matt's idea. I am trying to use Matt library but the REST server is poorly implemented (civicrm 3.3) and it does not return proper HTTP error codes.

[rtacconi]

It is too low level and you are messing your code

[ceejayoz]

It's not too low level and if you're messing your code you're doing it wrong.

[rtacconi]

yes it is too low level. Better something like $lib->post($url, $params);

[Bjørn Otto Vasbotten]

Matt, thanks a lot. Seems several people are getting interested in PEST atm. :)

[clockworkgeek]

A nice use of HTTP module, just a shame that it's not shipped with PHP as standard.

[Prof. Falken]

Haha, the PHP fractal of bad design strikes again. :-)

[thatidiotguy]

Matt, how do you go about stopping curl from always doing POST requests with Content-Type: x-www-formurlencoded?

[halfer]

+1, giving this a go now. Still on 5.2, so stuff like Guzzle is out for me atm.

[Lupuz]

Then you can create your own class that does that low level and use it for high level code

[Bjørn Otto Vasbotten]

Really fun to see all the renewed activity on Github lately. :)

[David Weinraub]

Now on packagist: packagist.org/packages/zendframework/zend-http

[Bastian Voigt]

Wow, a lot of client libs to choose from... Guzzle is now part of the Drupal 8 core, so I guess it will be around for a while. Going for this one!

[Alastair Irvine]

Respect/Rest is a REST "server" (more correctly, a controller), not a client.