Creating a RESTful API - HELP!
- by Martin Cox
Hi Chaps
Over the last few weeks I've been learning about iOS development, which has naturally led me into the world of APIs. Now, searching around on the Internet, I've come to the conclusion that using the REST architecture is very much recommended - due to it's supposed simplicity and ease of implementation.
However, I'm really struggling with the implementation side of REST. I understand the concept; using HTTP methods as verbs to describe the action of a request and responding with suitable response codes, and so on. It's just, I don't understand how to code it.
I don't get how I map a URI to an object. I understand that a GET request for domain.com/api/user/address?user_id=999 would return the address of user 999 - but I don't understand where or how that mapping from /user/address to some method that queries a database has taken place.
Is this all coded in one php script? Would I just have a method that grabs the URI like so:
$array = explode("/", ltrim(rtrim($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], "/"), "/"))
And then cycle through that array, first I would have a request for a "user", so the PHP script would direct my request to the user object and then invoke the address method. Is that what actually happens? I've probably not explained my thought process very well there.
The main thing I'm not getting is how that URI /user/address?id=999 somehow is broken down and executed - does it actually resolve to code?
class user(id) {
address() {
//get user address
}
}
I doubt I'm making sense now, so I'll call it a day trying to explain further. I hope someone out there can understand what I'm trying to say!
Thanks Chaps, look forward to your responses.
Martin
p.s - I'm not a developer yet, I'm learning :)
