Returning http status codes with a rest api

Question

I am building my own rest api in php for practice. I can evaluate the http code sent to my api (post,put,delete,get). But when I send out my response I really am just printing out a json. For example, I build a response in my api like this

    public function actionTest()
    {
        $rtn=array("id":"3","name":"John");
        print json_encode($rtn);
    }

I am not manipulating the headers in anyway. From reading stackoverflow, I understand that I should be returning http response codes to match my api results. How can I build on my api and return the response codes. I just don't understand how I can do it because right now I am just printing out a json.

I am not asking which codes to return. I just want to know how to return codes in general.

Solution

You could re-think your code this way

public function actionTest()
{
    try {
        // Here: everything went ok. So before returning JSON, you can setup HTTP status code too
        $rtn = array("id", "3", "name", "John");
        http_response_code(200);
        print json_encode($rtn);
    }
    catch (SomeException $ex) {
        $rtn = array("id", "3", "error", "something wrong happened");
        http_response_code(500);
        print json_encode($rtn);
    }
}

Basically, before stream the output (the JSON data), you can set the HTTP status code by http_response_code($code) function.

And about your additional question in comment, yes, printing the JSON data is the correct way.