losrobbos/laravel-api

PHP Laravel API Template

Requirements

• PHP 9
• PHP Modules: php-xml, php-curl, php-zip, php-pgsql, php-mysql
• PHP "Composer" for creating web projects and install packages

Concepts used in Template

• Routing
• Controller
• Database Connection
• Database Table setup (Migration)
• CRUD against a Database Resource (Create-Read-Update-Delete)
• Request File (requests.http) for testing your Routes
• Signup with password hashing
• Login with API Token creation
• Route Protection with Token verification
• Deployment to Heroku using Procfile

Configure it

• copy the .env.sample file to an .env file
• Look inside .env file for the section that starts with "DB_" (around line 11)
• Filll in your DB Connection details
  • in case you don't have one, you could e.g. create a free MySQL database at https://www.freesqldatabase.com/
  • after registration and creation of the database you will receive an email with the connection details (host, database, user, password) which you can fill into the .env file
• Start the app from terminal: "php artisan serve"
• If it works: Try to navigate to the route /api/animals in the browser -> it probably will complain that the animals table does not exist the database
• Creating the database tables by running migration:
  • "php artisan migrate"
  • (hoping it runs through without errors :leichtes_lächeln:)
• If migration worked: Try to navigate to /api/animals again
  • => it should now return an empty array instead of error.
  • In that case: Your DB connection works!
• Now you can test to create a new entry, using the request.http file
  • POST an animal
  • Afterwards list all animals using GET /api/animals
  • Your new animals should get listed here
  • Post 2-3 more
  • Try update and delete of animal too

Preparing for deployment

On Heroku you can deploy PHP pages for free

• Login on heroku.com
  • Create an account if you don't have one so far
• In the dashboard: Create a new app
  • In case you already have 5 apps => hopefully you can delete an old one
  • Otherwise you need to create another Heroku account using another email
• Configure .env
  • Go to Tab "Settings"
  • Copy all DB variables from your .env file over to here
    • DB_CONNECTION
    • DB_HOST
    • DB_DATABASE
    • DB_USERNAME
    • DB_PASSWORD
  • Also create a config var "TOKEN_SECRET" and give it some value, e.g. yourHolySecret, ideally with some special chars in it
    • the TOKEN_SECRET will get used to create and verify your login tokens
• Import your code from GitHub
  • Go to tab "Deploy"
  • Deployment method: Choose "GitHub"
  • Pick / Import your PHP Laravel repo from GitHub
• Manual Deploy => deploy branch
  • You can also activate automatic deploys
  • Then on each push to your Repo, Heroku will deploy the new stuff automatically-
• Once the deploy ran through => click "Open App"
• Test your /api/animals route if it shows the data from your DB
• DONE!

Use free Postgres database on Heroku

The freesqldatabase has a limit of 5 MB. It is ideal for local development, but not that much for usage in production.

• In Tab "Overview" click the link "Configure Add-ons"
• In Section "Add-Ons" => search in the Input field for "Heroku Postgres"
• Activate the Add-On
• Now a Postgres database will get created for your app
• Go to Settings => Reveal Config vars
• You should see a new key "DATABASE_URL" which points to the Postgres DB
• Change key DB_CONNECTION from "mysql" to "pgsql"
• Now your API should connect to your postgres DB instead
• Now click "Open App"
• Navigate to "/api/animals" - probably the list is empty
• In requests.http => configure the API_URL to point to your heroku app
  • ideally comment out the API_URL pointing to localhost
• Now execute a POST request to /api/animals to create a new animal into the postgres DB
• Check the /api/animals route in the browser if it worked!