Resauce Framework

Resauce is a small extension to Zend Framework. It gives you a lightweight framework for building RESTful HTTP interfaces with PHP.

Introduction

The main idea is to treat each controller as a Resource; i.e. a controller is responsible for one resource. This is distinct from other solutions (such as the REST components included in ZF itself) where a controller is responsible for both collection and item resources.

Example Routes:

‘/blog’ >> BlogController

‘/blog/:post’ >> BlogPostController

‘/blog/:post/comments’ >> BlogPostCommentsController

A route in a Resauce application simply maps a URI pattern to a Resauce controller – no controller action should ever be specified in a route. Instead – controller actions are ‘routed’ according to the HTTP method of a given request.

i.e.

• GET >> getAction()
• PUT >> putAction()
• PATCH >> patchAction()
• POST >> postAction()
• LINK >> linkAction()
• UNLINK >> unlinkAction()
• DELETE >> deleteAction()
• HEAD >> headAction()
• OPTIONS >> optionsAction()

If a request is routed to a resauce controller which does not have an action implemented for the given HTTP method, then the Resauce will automatically respond with a 405 Method Not Allowed response code.

So what?

The Resauce approach to MVC provides much more flexibility over how resources can be exposed than other alternatives – you have complete control of URI patterns and each resource’s HTTP methods.

REST is not collection/item CRUD over HTTP, frameworks that don’t agree with this are needlessly restricting and/or confusing developers; when the only (debatable) ‘benefit’ is that collection and item resources can be handled by one controller and one route.

“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” – H. L. Mencken

Example Usage

Configure routing for your interface by creating an _initRoutes function in your Resauce Bootstrap.

application/Bootstrap.php:

<?php
class Bootstrap extends Resauce_Application_Bootstrap
{
  public function _initRoutes() {
    $this->addResauceRoutes(array(
      'blog' => 'blog',
      'blog/:post' => 'blog-post',
      'blog/:post/comments' => 'blog-post-comments'
    ));
  }
}

Then create the controllers in the controller directory, with Actions for HTTP methods you want the URI to support:

e.g. application/controllers/BlogController.php

<?php
class BlogController extends Resauce_Controller_Resource
{
  // Action for handling GET requests i.e. GET /blog
  public function getAction() {
    // fetch list of posts, add them to view, render the view
  }
  // Action for handling POST requests i.e. POST /blog
  public function postAction() {
    // create new post
  }
}

For the routes in the example Boostrap above – you would, obviously, need to create the other controllers:

BlogPostController.php
BlogPostCommentsController.php