API Response Formatter

Table of Contents

• About
• How it works
  • Example 1
    • Output
  • Example 2
    • Output
  • Example 3
    • Output
  • Example 4
    • Output
• Installation
• Get started
• Changelog
• Contributing
• License

About

A simple and fast 🚀 library that displays responses in various formats, according to the Accept header, entered by the user. The library currently displays responses in JSON, XML, CSV, and YAML.

How it works

The API Response Formatter package provides the developer with a middleware called api-response-formatter. This middleware takes Response and converts it to a certain format based on the user's request.

In practical terms:

1. Reads the contents of the Accept header to know which response format to display to the user.
2. Takes the original response content provided by Laravel and convert it to the desired format;
3. Displays the response to the user;

It also provides a custom ExceptionHandler, which allows exceptions to also be thrown in the formats you want. A very nice trick of this handler is that when the route is /api/*, it forces the response to be in JSON, CSV, YAML or XML (if no type is informed via Accept, then JSON is selected by default). This prevents the API, at some point of failure, returns an HTML error.

Example 1

GET /api/v1/users
Accept: application/xml

Output

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xml>
    <item>
        <id>30</id>
        <name>Guilherme</name>
        <surname>Girardi</surname>
        <email>[email protected]</email>
        <created_at>2019-04-24 20:34:03</created_at>
        <updated_at>2019-04-24 20:34:03</updated_at>
    </item>
    ...
</xml>

Example 2

GET /api/v1/users
Accept: application/json

Output

[
    {
        "id": 30,
        "name":"Guilherme",
        "surname": "Girardi",
        "email": "[email protected]",
        "created_at": "2019-04-24 20:34:03",
        "updated_at": "2019-04-24 20:34:03"
    }
]

Example 3

GET /api/v1/users
Accept: text/csv

Output

id,name,surname,email,created_at,updated_at
30,Guilherme,Girardi,[email protected],"2019-04-24 20:34:03","2019-04-24 20:34:03"

Example 4

GET /api/v1/users
Accept: application/x-yaml

Output

id: 30
name: Guilherme
surname: Girardi
email: [email protected]
created_at: '2019-04-24 20:34:03'
updated_at: '2019-04-24 20:34:03'

Installation

1. First, run: composer require ejetar/laravel-api-response-formatter;
2. Add Ejetar\ApiResponseFormatter\Providers\AppServiceProvider::class in providers array in config/app.php file;
3. In app/Exceptions/Handler.php, replace Illuminate\Foundation\Exceptions\Handler with Ejetar\ApiResponseFormatter\Exceptions\Handler;
4. In public/index.php, replace Illuminate\Http\Request::capture() with Ejetar\ApiResponseFormatter\Requests\Request::capture();

Get started

To start using this package is very simple, just call Middlware api-response-formatter in your routes/api.php file.

As in the following example:

Route::middleware(['cors', 'api-response-formatter'])->prefix('/v1')->name('api.')->group(function() {
    Route::prefix('users')->name('users.')->group(function () {
        Route::get('me', 'UsersController@me')->name('me');
    });
});

Changelog

Nothing for now...

Contributing

Contribute to this wonderful project, it will be a pleasure to have you with us. Let's help the free software community. You are invited to incorporate new features, make corrections, report bugs, and any other form of support. Don't forget to star in this repository! 😀

License

This library is a open-source software licensed under the MIT license.