Using the REST API with PHP¶

Here is an example that uses PHP ActiveResource, a lightweight PHP library that can be used to access Rails' REST APIs:

<?php
require_once ('ActiveResource.php');

class Issue extends ActiveResource {
    var $site = 'http://username:password@192.168.199.129:3000/';
    var $request_format = 'xml'; // REQUIRED!
}

// create a new issue
$issue = new Issue (array ('subject' => 'XML REST API', 'project_id' => '1'));
$issue->save ();
echo $issue->id;

// find issues
$issues = $issue->find ('all');
for ($i=0; $i < count($issues); $i++) {
    echo $issues[$i]->subject;
}

// find and update an issue
$issue->find (1);
echo $issue->subject;
$issue->set ('subject', 'This is the new subject')->save ();

// delete an issue
$issue->find (1);
$issue->destroy ();
?>

Known issues

• If you are working with large descriptions, the webserver can return a 417 error (Bad Expectation).
  You should replace line 381 in ActiveResource.php with the following code:
  

  curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array ('Expect:',"Content-Type: text/xml", "Length: " . strlen ($params)));

• If you are trying to use the class to write time_entries, you will get a 404 response (#9375). The reason for that is that the class is unable to create the correct singular form from the pluralized version of the entity name. (edit 2011-10-06: according to the website the bug was fixed in the latest release: https://github.com/lux/phpactiveresource/issues/7#issuecomment-2300502)
  This can be patched in ActiveResource.php by:
1. adding the class variable $sOriginalElementName:
   

   protected $sOriginalElementName = '';

2. changing the constructor to set the class variable using the original entity name before the pluralization is called:
   

   function __construct ($data = array ()) {
     $this->_data = $data;
   
     // add this line here - to store the original name of the entity
     $this->sOriginalElementName = ($this->element_name ? $this->element_name : strtolower (get_class ($this)));
     // Allow class-defined element name or use class name if not defined
     $this->element_name = ($this->element_name ? $this->pleuralize ($this->element_name) : $this->pleuralize (strtolower (get_class ($this))));
   ...
   

3. and then changing the method _send_and_receive to use $sOriginalElementName instead of substr ($this->element_name, 0, -1):
   

   function _send_and_receive ($url, $method, $data = array ()) {
     $params = '';
     $el = $this->sOriginalElementName;//substr ($this->element_name, 0, -1);
     if ($this->request_format == 'url') {
   ...