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My first API using native PHP

theahmedlatif

Ahmed AbdElLatif

Posted on April 9, 2021

My first API using native PHP

I tried to create my first API while exercising OOP using php, and here what I achieved, take live look here!

First things First!

I created env.php which includes class Environment to parse my own .env file through public function getDatabaseVariables() in order to capture database variables

#Database#
HOST = "localhost"
DATABASE_SERVICE = "mysql"
DATABASE_NAME = "example_db"
DATABASE_USERNAME = "example_user"
DATABASE_PASSWORD = "example_password"
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I followed the below approach to parse .env file using preg_match to detect the first line.

$validate_line_from_env_file = preg_match('~^[a-zA-Z]~',$line);
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then make use of explode and strpos to catch variable in an associative array as following:

$env_file_text = explode('= "',$line);
$env_variable_key_length = strpos($env_file_text[0]," ");
$env_variable_key = substr($env_file_text[0],0,$env_variable_key_length);
$env_variable_value_length = strpos($env_file_text[1],"\"");
$env_variable_value = substr($env_file_text[1],0,$env_variable_value_length);
if ($env_variable_value == true)
{
    $this->variables += [$env_variable_key => $env_variable_value];
}
else if ($env_variable_value === "")
{
    $this->variables += [$env_variable_key => ""];
}
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Then those variables are passed to class Database that extends class Environment where the __construct() function store the required variables, after that a database connection will be created using PDO.

Query the items

The database connection function is being called through __construct() function of class Museum, where the query statement exists

public function getMuseums()
{
    $sqlQuery = "SELECT id, mname, arabic_name, city, type, est_year, website, coordinates, wikipedia_url FROM " . $this->db_table;
    $statement = $this->conn->prepare($sqlQuery);
    $statement->execute();
    return $statement;

}
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Finally!

query is being executed in read.php which present api result in json format.

$statement = $items->getMuseums();
$result = $statement->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
$itemCount = $statement->rowCount();

//prepare array for json format
if ($itemCount > 0){
    $museumArray = array();
    $museumArray["itemCount"] = $itemCount;
    $museumArray["body"] = $result;

    echo json_encode($museumArray);
}
else
{
http_response_code(404);
echo json_encode(
    array("message" => "No record found.")
);
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last piece: I added the following .htaccess code to prevent accessing other routes except .api/read.php

Order deny,allow
Deny from all

<Files "read.php">
    Allow from all
</Files>
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Output sample

Alt Text

You can check this api

on github
or visit the live version

Thanks for your time reading my article!

💖 💪 🙅 🚩
theahmedlatif
Ahmed AbdElLatif

Posted on April 9, 2021

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