Zend Framework getAction method

Question

I am new to MVC and Zend, so I have little idea what I am doing at the moment, but here is my question.

The following code is my get method for an API I am attempting to build in order to learn both. It works as is, but given the sparsity of code I have seen in example methods, and the fact that Zend seems to do a lot for you, is there a better way of doing this? The code is something I cobbled together because the tutorial that I was walking through forgot to add the get method code.

public function getAction()
{
 // action body
 // Is there a better way to get the id from the URL?
 $this->_getAllParams();
 $request = $this->_request->getParams();
 if (array_key_exists($request['id'], $this->_todo)){
 $return[] = array($request['id'] => $this->_todo[$request['id']]);
 }else{
 // error code here or call some error method?
 // do I do error coding here or send a message to some handler/helper?
 }
 echo Zend_Json::encode($return);
}

Essentially this will take a URL and pass json encode information that is currently stored in an array, i.e:

http://restapi.local/api/1

Will display:

[{"1":"Buy milk"}]

The routing takes place in the bootstrap:

class Bootstrap extends Zend_Application_Bootstrap_Bootstrap
{
 public function _initRoutes()
 {
 $front = Zend_Controller_Front::getInstance();
 $router = $front->getRouter();
 $restRoute = new Zend_Rest_Route($front);
 $router->addRoute('default', $restRoute);
 }
}

Below is the full ApiController.php:

class ApiController extends Zend_Controller_Action
{
 public function init()
 {
 /* Initialize action controller here */
 $this->_helper->viewRenderer->setNoRender(true);
 $this->_todo = array (
 "1" => "Buy milk",
 "2" => "Pour glass of milk",
 "3" => "Eat cookies"
 );
 }
 public function indexAction()
 {
 // action body
 echo Zend_Json::encode($this->_todo);
 }
 public function getAction()
 {
 // action body
 $this->_getAllParams();
 $request = $this->_request->getParams();
 if (array_key_exists($request['id'], $this->_todo)){
 $return[] = array($request['id'] => $this->_todo[$request['id']]);
 }
 echo Zend_Json::encode($return);
 }
 public function postAction()
 {
 // action body
 $item = $this->_request->getPost('item');
 $this->_todo[count($this->_todo) + 1] = $item;
 echo Zend_Json::encode($this->_todo);
 }
 public function putAction()
 {
 // action body
 }
 public function deleteAction()
 {
 // action body
 }
}

• Corbin: Can't comment on the Zend stuff since I don't quite understand what's going on here, but the first thing that jumps out at me is that it's possible for your encode call to act on a non-existing variable. (Also, I suspect that it should be returned instead of echo'd.) Can you post the entire class? I'm a bit confused about what _todo is.

Answer 1

By using Zend_Rest_Route you are on a good way. I wouldn't recommend making it the default route though, as I had trouble when using MVC-stuff which required additional params not specified in the route, e.g. for a paginator. You could also move the routing-configuration to your application.ini to keep your Bootstrap-class clean.

I recommend simplifying your getAction() by using:

$id = $this->getRequest()->getParam('id', null);
$id = $this->_request->getParam('id');

Both are identical, but I prefer using the get-methods in case I use them to override the handling of the underlying class-property (in this case $this->_request). The second argument specifies the default value to be used, if the param is not set (by default this is null).

edit: Also, instead of

$this->_todo[count($this->_todo) + 1] = $item;
$this->_todo[] = $item;

this will automatically append $item to $this->_todo, even if the variable is not yet initialized.

• SuperMykEl: Thanks, I should have looked deeper into the $this->getRequest()->getParam(). That is a much simpler way, and makes checking for errors simpler as well.