How to expose a RESTful API from a Symfony app with minimal effort. At Forky we launched our MVP in one month with only 3 developers -it was imperative we waste no time with simple problems so we could have time over to deal with the difficult tasks. This is how we did it.

1. Building a documented RESTful API in just a few hours with
Symfony
January 2016

2. What is Forky?
A service that brings you
GREAT FOOD in <15 MINUTES
MVP launched in August 2014

3. Forky works like this
1.
Choose from
2 healthy meals
2.
Place your order
In 3 taps
3.
We deliver in
<15 minutes
3

4. Behind the scenes

5. How Symfony helped us
• Great variety of bundles
e.g. FOSUserBundle, FOSRestBundle, FOSOAuthServerBundle,
NelmioApiDocBundle and many more
• Sound architecture
• Predictable release schedule
• Excellent documentation

6. With the right combination of
bundles, the Forky MVP was built in
just 1 month.

7. Our goal
Expose a Symfony app RESTfully with minimal effort:
• /orders endpoint that accepts GET, POST, PUT &
DELETE HTTP methods
• Users authenticated using OAuth
• Document API endpoint, parameters & response codes

8. Example use case
A simple system for taking customer orders

9. Step 1: Building the /orders endpoint
FOSRestBundle provides tools to rapidly
develop RESTful APIs:
• Automatic RESTful route generation
• Format agnostic output (e.g. xml, json, or html)
• Decoding of request body and headers
• Exception controller with appropriate HTTP codes

10. # app/config/routing.yml
orders:
type: rest
resource: AppBundleControllerApiOrderController
prefix: /api
Step 1: Building the /orders endpoint
We need 2 things:
• ApiOrderController to handle API requests
to /orders
• A routing definition that defines
ApiOrderController as a REST resource

11. Step 1: Building the /orders endpoint
To POST an order, create a “postOrdersAction”:
use FOSRestBundleViewView;
/* ... */
class ApiOrderController extends Controller {
public function postOrdersAction() {
$user = $this->container->get('security.context')->getToken()->getUser();
$order = new Order($user);
$form = $this->createForm(new OrderType(), $order);
$form->submit($this->getRequest()->get($form->getName()));
if(!$this->getRequest()->request->has($form->getName())) {
throw new HttpException(400, "No parameters passed");
} else if(!$form->isValid()) {
throw new HttpException(400, $form->getErrorsAsString());
}
$this->container->get('acme.order.manager')->sendOrder($form->getData());
$view = View::create()->setStatusCode(201)->setData($form->getData());
return $this->container->get('fos_rest.view_handler')->handle($view);
}
}

12. Step 1: Building the /orders endpoint
• To GET an order:
/* ... */
class ApiOrderController extends Controller {
/* … */
public function getOrdersAction(Order $order) {
$view = View::create()->setStatusCode(200)->setData($order);
return $this->container->get('fos_rest.view_handler')->handle($view);
}
}
• Similarly, define putOrderAction and
deleteOrderAction for PUT and DELETE

13. Step 2 – Authentication
• REST is stateless – no cookies or sessions
• Implement OAuth2 authentication flow with
FOSOAuthServerBundle
• This hooks into Symfony’s security and firewall
components as well as FOSUserBundle

14. Step 3 - Documentation
NelmioApiDocBundle auto-generates up-to-
date documentation:
• Needs only a few annotations per endpoint
• Auto-detects input & output parameters

15. Step 3 - Documentation
Add this annotation block above the relevant
controller method:
use NelmioApiDocBundleAnnotationApiDoc;
/* ... */
class ApiOrderController extends Controller {
/**
* @ApiDoc(
* description="Place a new Order",
* input="AppBundleFormTypeOrderType",
* output="AppBundleEntityOrder"
* )
*/
public function postOrdersAction() {
/* ... */
}
}

16. Step 3 - Documentation

17. Using these tools, exposing a
RESTful API becomes trivial

18. Your first meal is on us!
FORKYSYMFONY
Valid until 15th January
1 free meal (up to 5 euro)

19. • Senior Software Engineer
• Senior Front-End/Full Stack Engineer
• UI/UX Designer
forky.workable.com | dnna@forky.gr, dimitris@forky.gr
P.S. We are hiring!