\nAccording to the REST guidelines, we have to make explicit use of the HTTP methods to make request to a REST based API. So the requests for basic CRUD operation in any application can be mapped to the HTTP methods or verbs<\/strong> in this way:<\/p>\n
- \n
- POST\u00a0<\/b>method to Create or Add new data ressource.<\/li>\n
- PUT\u00a0<\/b>method to Update an existing data ressource.<\/li>\n
- GET<\/b>\u00a0method to retrieve an existing data ressource.<\/li>\n
- DELETE\u00a0<\/b>method to remove or delete an existing data ressource.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
We can use CodeIgniter to create a RESTful API for your existing web applications, and demonstrate how to interact with your own API or other RESTful web-services, such as Facebook and Twitter.<\/p>\n
![\"url-partitions\"](\"http:\/\/www.extradrm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/url-partitions.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
RESTful Concept<\/h3>\n
Before diving into the implementation, let\u2019s first review the RESTful concept. Representational State Transfer<\/a> (REST) is an architectural model for web services rather than a standard. As REST has grown to be the dominant model for web services over the past few years, however, most implementations follow common design patterns.<\/p>\n
Use Nouns instead of Verbs<\/h4>\n
Your RESTful API should provide access to things and not actions.<\/p>\n
So, instead of this:<\/p>\n
createCustomer\r\ngetCustomer?id=666<\/pre>\n
Do this:<\/p>\n
POST \/customers\r\nGET \/customers\/666<\/pre>\n
Everything Has an ID<\/h4>\n
The beauty of REST is its simplicity. In a sense, REST is really just a collection of Universal Resource Identifiers (URIs). To be an identifier, every resource should have a unique ID.<\/p>\n
GET \/customers\/666\r\nGET \/products\/4234<\/pre>\n
In this video we will see how to install CodeIgniter under linux and set up a simple hello rest web service in few minutes.<\/p>\n
[flv:video\/rest-server-codeigniter.flv 480 360]<\/p>\n
Part 1 \u2013 Creating a RESTful API<\/h3>\n
Step 1: Setting up the Demo<\/h3>\n
Firstly you need to download the codeigniter-restserver<\/a> code from GitHub and extract it and move the code to your server. A fully RESTful server implementation for CodeIgniter using one library (codeigniter-restserver<\/a>), one config file and one controller.<\/p>\n
Step 2: The URLs<\/h3>\n
With the files extracted and the base_url set, we are ready to load up our RESTful CodeIgniter installation, and have a look at the demo supplied with it. Browse the base URL, which by default is:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/localhost\/restserver<\/pre>\n
Step 3: The Code<\/h3>\n
Now if you open up application\/controllers\/example_api.php<\/em> you will immediatley spot a few differences from normal CodeIgniter controllers.<\/p>\n
REST_Controller<\/h4>\n
In the MVC pattern, a controller is the central point of the logic. It is called when a user makes a request and then based on the logic in the controller it fetches data and outputs views. CodeIgniter contains its own logic for how a Controller should work, but as we are doing something different we need our own REST_Controller library to contain its own REST related logic. So simply use:<\/p>\n
\r\n\t<?php\r\n\trequire(APPPATH'.libraries\/REST_Controller.php');\r\n\t\r\n\tclass\u00a0Example_api\u00a0extends\u00a0REST_Controller\u00a0{\r\n\t\r\n\t}\r\n<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What is REST ? REST stands for\u00a0Representational State Transfer . In very simple terms, In REST we have basically two broader actions\u00a0Request\u00a0and\u00a0Response. Client will send the request to the REST API in a data...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2841,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,267,5,10,477],"tags":[],"youtube_video":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.extradrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1745"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.extradrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.extradrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.extradrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.extradrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.extradrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.extradrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.extradrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.extradrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.extradrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
- PUT\u00a0<\/b>method to Update an existing data ressource.<\/li>\n