Programmer's Reference Guide

Zend_Rest_Client

Zend_Rest_Server

Introduction

Zend_Rest_Server is intended as a fully-featured REST server.

REST Server Usage

Example #1 Basic Zend_Rest_Server Usage - Classes

$server = new Zend_Rest_Server();
$server->setClass('My_Service_Class');
$server->handle();

Example #2 Basic Zend_Rest_Server Usage - Functions

/**
 * Say Hello
 *
 * @param string $who
 * @param string $when
 * @return string
 */
function sayHello($who, $when)
{
    return "Hello $who, Good $when";
}
 
$server = new Zend_Rest_Server();
$server->addFunction('sayHello');
$server->handle();

Calling a Zend_Rest_Server Service

To call a Zend_Rest_Server service, you must supply a GET/POST method argument with a value that is the method you wish to call. You can then follow that up with any number of arguments using either the name of the argument (i.e. "who") or using arg following by the numeric position of the argument (i.e. "arg1").

Note: Numeric index
Numeric arguments use a 1-based index.

To call sayHello from the example above, you can use either:

?method=sayHello&who=Davey&when=Day

or:

?method=sayHello&arg1=Davey&arg2=Day

Sending A Custom Status

When returning values, to return a custom status, you may return an array with a status key.

Example #3 Returning Custom Status

/**
 * Say Hello
 *
 * @param string $who
 * @param string $when
 * @return array
 */
function sayHello($who, $when)
{
    return array('msg' => "An Error Occurred", 'status' => false);
}
 
$server = new Zend_Rest_Server();
$server->addFunction('sayHello');
$server->handle();

Returning Custom XML Responses

If you wish to return custom XML, simply return a DOMDocument, DOMElement or SimpleXMLElement object.

Example #4 Return Custom XML

/**
 * Say Hello
 *
 * @param string $who
 * @param string $when
 * @return SimpleXMLElement
 */
function sayHello($who, $when)
{
    $xml ='<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<mysite>
    <value>Hey $who! Hope you\'re having a good $when</value>
    <code>200</code>
</mysite>';
 
    $xml = simplexml_load_string($xml);
    return $xml;
}
 
$server = new Zend_Rest_Server();
$server->addFunction('sayHello');
 
$server->handle();

The response from the service will be returned without modification to the client.

Zend_Rest_Client

Zend_Rest
Programmer's Reference Guide

Zend_Search_Lucene

Comments

Posted by: Aash on: 2011-08-05 15:58:00 ⁋

@Andrew: Agreed. I wish this was more informative.

Posted by: Andrew on: 2011-08-03 17:04:04 ⁋

How is requesting a "sayHello" method RESTful? "sayHello" is not a resource, so I don't understand how this is RESTful at all. Calling a custom method is a SOAP paradigm.

I also don't understand what this "Zend_Rest_Server" is supposed to do and why it's useful. "Zend_Rest_Server is intended as a fully-featured REST server." is not enough to explain what this class is intended to be used for. A REST server should be able to:

1. receive and parse a request
2. retrieve, create, update, or delete the requested resource
3. then respond with a representation of the resource in the appropriate format (XML or JSON)

...and that's it! Nothing more. Nothing less.

There is nothing in this documentation that makes me think that Zend_Rest_Server does any of that. How are we even supposed to use this?

Posted by: Vincent Franco on: 2011-08-18 17:50:59 ⁋

Thanks again Zend for providing useful documentation.

Posted by: Basavaraj on: 2011-11-16 04:18:23 ⁋

I doubt if Zend really have to provide the server and client APIs, coz they are not adding any value to RESTfulness of a Web Service

I would expect these server and client classes to provide some common framework method on handling requests, responses, errors, GET, POST, PUT, DELETE methods

Like a POST and PUT methods should always return the URI of the resource just got created or updated.

I don't see any such thing in these classes, hence better these should be removed, else programmers will wrongly use these, which is more of SOAP or RPC rest invocation classes.

Posted by: matthew day on: 2011-11-22 01:50:02 ⁋

to use put you have to add this

resources.frontController.plugins.putHandler = "Zend_Controller_Plugin_PutHandler"

it's basically a crappy little helper that checks to see if there's a put request and if so then it puts the variables you're sending along with it into the params. idk why the params aren't included by default when trying to see your vars passed in the putAction

Posted by: Jeremy Warne on: 2012-01-07 03:42:57 ⁋

You're right, this class's documentation is shocking. But Zend does come with a good Rest solution, it's just not here. It's hidden in the Controller docs:

http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.controller.router.html#zend.controller.router.routes.rest

Zend_Rest_Server, as pointed out in this comments, isn't really that useful and is probably on its way out.