CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phprestlaravel-4
user3122094
user3122094

Reputation: 241

Laravel 4. Return database table as JSON

Im really new to Laravel. I have manage to set up a database via the migration functionality, and now i want to renturn a table from the database as json. What im working on is kind of a rest-api-thingy. Nothing too fancy.

In my router i have a route going to /api/cases wich inits the controller for the cases. From that controller i basically just want to return a table from my database as JSON.

Router:

Route::resource('/api/cases', 'CasesController');

Controller:

class CasesController extends \BaseController {

    public function index()
    {
        //return db table as json here
    }
}

Model:

class Case extends \Eloquent {
    protected $fillable = [];
}

And my database looks like this:

I have only one table, named "cases". That one has attributes like "id", "name", "title". How would i now return that rest-like as json?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2190

Answers (3)

Phil Sturgeon
Phil Sturgeon

Reputation: 30766

I don't believe it is the job of the ORM to worry about presentation logic, and that is what JSON is. You'll aways need to cast data to various types as well as hide things and sometimes create a buffer zone to rename things safely.

You can do all of that with Fractal which I built for exactly this reason.

<?php namespace App\Transformer;

use Acme\Model\Book;
use League\Fractal\TransformerAbstract;

class BookTransformer extends TransformerAbstract
{
    /**
     * List of resources possible to include
     *
     * @var array
     */
    protected $availableIncludes = [
        'author'
    ];

    /**
     * Turn this item object into a generic array
     *
     * @return array
     */
    public function transform(Book $book)
    {
        return [
            'id'    => (int) $book->id,
            'title' => $book->title,
            'year'    => (int) $book->yr,
            'links'   => [
                [
                    'rel' => 'self',
                    'uri' => '/books/'.$book->id,
                ]
            ],
        ];
    }

    /**
     * Include Author
     *
     * @return League\Fractal\ItemResource
     */
    public function includeAuthor(Book $book)
    {
        $author = $book->author;

        return $this->item($author, new AuthorTransformer);
    }
}

Embedding (including) stuff might be a bit more than you need right now, but it can be very handy too.

I often give talks about APIs and the dangers of trying to expose database schema directly. Unless you app is on an internal network, and only your app looks at this data, and your app will never going to change at all then interacting directly with the table is a very bad idea.

Here is my talk, which uses Laravel as an example a few times.

Upvotes: 0

Cjmarkham
Cjmarkham

Reputation: 9700

You can simply call the toJSON() method:

Case::all()->toJson();

Upvotes: 1

Dave Morrissey
Dave Morrissey

Reputation: 4421

I assume you have your Case model tested and working properly. Once that's done, you can query for all the objects in this table, convert the result to an array, and encode it as JSON.

public function index()
{
    return Response::json(Case::all()->toArray());
}

Upvotes: 1

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