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I am planning to use a architecture (MVC = PHP->Yii) where I will be using REST API based architecture for native site (main web app) and non-native (apps such as iPhone, BB, WAP etc).

No my question is it advisable to use View-Controller (HTML+User Requests) (For Main Site) with Controller-Model (Request/Response+DB) (for API) and same API platform will be used for non-native apps, or should I use full MVC for main site and build separate platform for APIs. This is because I don't want additional HTTP (cURL) overhead for main site.

Update: @karmakaze That's the though with me but still I have to write RestControllers because there is lots of code involved. So anyway we ends up having two different controllers e.g.

UserController extends CController {
    actionRegister() {
        ...Some calculations
        .
        .
        Instead of making Calls to model We will use call controller i.e.
        $userRest = new UserRestController();
        /*
         * This will return json data or php obj depending on params passed or
         * may raise an exception
         */
        $userRest->actionCreate($param1, $param2);
        // Process data obtained.
    }
}

or is there any other way around?

tereško
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Borderless.Nomad
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3 Answers3

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If it fits your needs, you may build a front-end based on some JavaScript libraries like AngularJs, BackBone.JS or any other MVC JavaScript library.

This way you should build only one RESTful API in Yii, as the back-end of your app.

This solution, however, lets something uncovered: it will be hard to make the application crawlable.

The perspective of the question made me to understand that it is relatively important to render the HTML on the server side. I am thinking at this solution:

  1. make normal MVC app, including controllers and views

  2. Use any of the following ticks:

    • a GET parameter that will be false by default, but ture when it is an API call:

Check this example:

// in a controller:
public function actionView($id, $api=false) {
    // some calculations, getting the $model variable
    if ($api) {
        echo $model->json_output(); // you can implement it in components/model.php or generate the json output some other way
    } else {
        render('view', array('model'=>$model));
    }
}
  • a subdomain called, for instance, api (you'll have api.yourapp.tld),
  • or use another HTTP parameter from the request to determine if it is an API call or not.

Any of these version will bring a way of verifying if the client requests a JSON/XML response (API call) or HTML for the browser.

This way you avoid the headache of building separate controllers for the API and the main site.

Note It is not required to do this trick for actions when they simply render a form - it is useless.

Note 2 You can use the latter method to render the requests with _request_fragment and assume that every request is an API call unless $_GET['_request_fragment'] is specified. Like this you can make an AngularJs, Blackbone.js app crawlable with Yii.

UPDATE The _request_fragment is specified here, and it is used by most search engines to crawl AJAX web applications.

Vlad V
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  • thanks for the info. I would rather prefer to build two controllers because there are lots of uncommon things between standard form controller and RestController in my application. Also is _request_fragment standard HTTP param? – Borderless.Nomad Jul 22 '12 at 06:45
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You can use the same for both native and non-native app, it will also reduce you work at development time as well update or change ur logic.... I do have so many experience with such situation..

Hiren Soni
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  • How to achieve not using cURL or HTTP calls for Native(main) site. – Borderless.Nomad Jul 19 '12 at 11:22
  • For native? I am not getting ur query...! – Hiren Soni Jul 19 '12 at 11:27
  • What I mean is why to call API platform from main site always using curl or REST call when I can put both of them in same app. e.g. /api/user/info is for API and in same place where /user/info for Main site is hosted. I want to leverage Interprocess Communication. – Borderless.Nomad Jul 19 '12 at 11:31
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Use full MVC for main web app and reuse the same Models and Controllers to build the REST API. There are extensions which will do this automagically if you follow Yii conventions while building the main web app. Just search REST in the Yii extensions. We'll be doing the same for our mobile apps. Currently investigating RESTFullYii.

karmakaze
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  • That's the though with me but still I have to write RestControllers because there is lots of code involved. So anyway we ends up having two different controllers e.g. `code` UserController { actionRegister() { ...Some calculations . . } } `code` – Borderless.Nomad Jul 21 '12 at 06:24