John Davidson

Message:

Let me start saying i'm new to Api Platform and atm i find it really hard to find all the documentation needed to make something work.

That said, my example problem is quite simple, i want a public endpoint where i can fetch the current mobile app version number (which is simply a string saved somewhere).

What i did until now (based on what i've found online/documentation/demo/symfonycast) is that i created a new PHP object inside my /Entity folder and named it "PublicApi".

use Ramsey\Uuid\Uuid;



#[ApiResource(

    collectionOperations: [],

    itemOperations: [

        'version' => [

            'method'     => 'GET',

            'read'       => false,

            'write'       => false,

            'path'       => '/version',

            'controller' => ApiPublicVersionAction::class,

            "openapi_context"         => [

                "summary"     => "Returns current app version.",

                "description" => "Public endpoint, no need to authenticate",

                'parameters'  => [],

                'requestBody' => [],

            ],

        ],

    ],

    routePrefix: '/public'

)]

class PublicApi {

    

    #[ApiProperty( identifier: true )]

    public $code;

    

    #[ApiProperty]

    private string $exposedData;

    

    public function __construct() {

        $this->code = Uuid::uuid4();

    }

doing that i can see the route being recognized by api platform, it shows up in the doc and i can test it. The controller is quite simple, it just has an __invoke method

<?php



namespace App\Controller\Api;



use App\Entity\PublicApi;

use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;



class ApiPublicVersionAction extends AbstractController {

    

    public function __invoke() {

        return ( new PublicApi() )->setExposedData( '1.0.0' );

    }

}

While this actually "works" i find it really confusing and i miss some pieces of information. I'd like to know the following:

1. Is there another way of creating a custom public endpoint or i am forced to create a new controller class with a single method (__invoke) for EVERY endpoint?


2. Can't i just have a single controller for all the endpoint and make api-platform call the corrisponding method? that would be so much more clear and easy to maintain


3. What are the actual options that i can pass to: collectionOperations, itemOperations or openapi_context? I can't really find a good list with some good documentation of what i can do


4. Why am i forced to have an identifier even in this case where i don't really want to fetch anything and i just want to return some non-structured data? The code i've made requires me to pass a random string (which is the "code" property value that api platform uses as identifier) when i don't really need it


5. I've read about DataProvider but in this case i don't really need one, in fact i tested creating a very simple one that simply supports PublicApi::class and it gives me no real advantage. Only one more class/file to maintain

---

My Answer:
AppVersion. This object has a single property called versionNumber which is a string.

Next, I created a new API resource for this object by creating a new PHP class inside my /Api folder and named it AppVersionResource. This class extends the AbstractResource class provided by Api Platform and specifies the AppVersion object as the data class.

I also added a custom operation to this resource called getVersionNumber which returns the current version number as a string.

Finally, I configured the API platform to expose this resource as a public endpoint by adding it to the api_platform.yaml file.

With these steps, I now have a public endpoint where I can fetch the current mobile app version number.