PHP REST client API call

Question

I'm wondering, is there an easy way to perform a REST API GET call? I've been reading about cURL, but is that a good way to do it?

I also came across php://input but I have no idea how to use it. Does anyone have an example for me?

I don't need advanced API client stuff, I just need to perform a GET call to a certain URL to get some JSON data that will be parsed by the client.

Thanks!

Answer 1

There are multiple ways to make REST client API call:

1. Use CURL

CURL is the simplest and good way to go. Here is a simple call

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, POST DATA);
$result = curl_exec($ch);

print_r($result);
curl_close($ch);

2. Use Guzzle

It's a "PHP HTTP client that makes it easy to work with HTTP/1.1 and takes the pain out of consuming web services". Working with Guzzle is much easier than working with cURL.

Here's an example from the Web site:

$client = new GuzzleHttp\Client();
$res = $client->get('https://api.github.com/user', [
    'auth' =>  ['user', 'pass']
]);
echo $res->getStatusCode();           // 200
echo $res->getHeader('content-type'); // 'application/json; charset=utf8'
echo $res->getBody();                 // {"type":"User"...'
var_export($res->json());             // Outputs the JSON decoded data

3. Use file_get_contents

If you have a url and your php supports it, you could just call file_get_contents:

$response = file_get_contents('http://example.com/path/to/api/call?param1=5');

if $response is JSON, use json_decode to turn it into php array:

$response = json_decode($response);

4. Use Symfony's RestClient

If you are using Symfony there's a great rest client bundle that even includes all of the ~100 exceptions and throws them instead of returning some meaningless error code + message.

try {
    $restClient = new RestClient();
    $response   = $restClient->get('http://www.someUrl.com');
    $statusCode = $response->getStatusCode();
    $content    = $response->getContent();
} catch(OperationTimedOutException $e) {
    // do something
}

5. Use HTTPFUL

Httpful is a simple, chainable, readable PHP library intended to make speaking HTTP sane. It lets the developer focus on interacting with APIs instead of sifting through curl set_opt pages and is an ideal PHP REST client.

Httpful includes...

• Readable HTTP Method Support (GET, PUT, POST, DELETE, HEAD, and OPTIONS)
• Custom Headers
• Automatic "Smart" Parsing
• Automatic Payload Serialization
• Basic Auth
• Client Side Certificate Auth
• Request "Templates"

Ex.

Send off a GET request. Get automatically parsed JSON response.

The library notices the JSON Content-Type in the response and automatically parses the response into a native PHP object.

$uri = "https://www.googleapis.com/freebase/v1/mqlread?query=%7B%22type%22:%22/music/artist%22%2C%22name%22:%22The%20Dead%20Weather%22%2C%22album%22:%5B%5D%7D";
$response = \Httpful\Request::get($uri)->send();

echo 'The Dead Weather has ' . count($response->body->result->album) . " albums.\n";

Answer 2

You can use file_get_contents if the fopen wrappers are enabled. See: http://php.net/manual/en/function.file-get-contents.php

If they are not, and you cannot fix that because your host doesn't allow it, cURL is a good method to use.