Simple Responses

Returning an Array

The most basic return value is an array:

<?php   
namespace My\Extension\Api;

use Nng\Nnrestapi\Annotations as Api;
use Nng\Nnrestapi\Api\AbstractApi;

/**
 * @Api\Endpoint()
 */
class Test extends AbstractApi {

   /**
    * @Api\Access("public")
    * @return array
    */
   public function getExampleAction()
   {
      return ['result'=>'welcome!'];
   }
}

If you open the URL https://www.youwebsite.com/api/test/example in your browser, you will see this JSON response:

{"result":"welcome!"}

Returning a Domain Model

You can also return a Model as response from your method:

public function getExampleAction()
{
   $model = $this->exampleRepository->findByUid( 123 );
   return $model;
}

In the result the model will be automatically converted to a JSON-object. Even relations like SysFileReferences or other models and objects get converted.

{"uid":123, "title":"nice!", "image":{"publicUrl":"path/to/some/image.jpg", "title":"..."}}

Tip

You can see in the example above, that FileReferences are automatically converted to an object containing title, publicUrl and several more properties from the original sys_file_reference and sys_file. If you only need the path to the image or file, you can set flattenFileReferences = 1 in the TypoScript settings, e.g.

plugin.tx_nnrestapi.settings.globalDistillers {
   My\Extension\Extbase\Domain\Model\Example {
      flattenFileReferences = 1
   }
}

The above example would then be flattened to this:

{"uid":123, "title":"nice!", "image":"path/to/some/image.jpg"}

Find out more in the section @ApiDistiller().

Returning an ObjectStorage

If you return an ObjectStorage, e.g. with multiple Domain Models - or SysFileReferences, the ObjectStorage will automatically be converted to an array:

public function getExampleAction()
{
   $allExamples = $this->exampleRepository->findAll();
   return $allExamples;
}

The result will be an array of Objects:

[
   {"uid":1, "title":"One", "image":{"publicUrl":"one.jpg"}},
   {"uid":2, "title":"Two", "image":null},
   {"uid":3, "title":"Three", "image":{"publicUrl":"three.jpg"}}
]

Example: Get list of all countries

Here are a few examples using the EXT:nnhelpers which can make life a lot easier when fetching data from the database.

/**
 * Get list of all static countries from the database
 *
 * @Api\Access("public")
 * @return array
 */
public function getCountriesAction()
{
   $countries = \nn\t3::Environment()->getCountries();
   return $countries;
}

Example: Return TypoScript-Setup

/**
 * Get TypoScript settings for given plugin
 *
 * @Api\Access("public")
 * @return array
 */
public function getSettingsAction()
{
   $settings = \nn\t3::Settings()->get('myextname');
   return $settings;
}

Example: Returning MANY rows of data

Sometimes – especially when retrieving many Object from a database table, the standard DataMapper of TYPO3 can be extremely slow. If there is no need to fetch relations, but simple get the raw data array from the database, this recipe will speed things up:

/**
 * the fastest way to get massive amount of data from database and return it as JSON
 *
 * @Api\Access("public")
 * @return array
 */
public function getBiglistAction()
{
   $rows = \nn\t3::Db()->findAll('tx_myext_domain_model_example');
   return $rows;
}

Tip

If you are looking for a way to remove certain fields / properties from the resulting JSON, then @ApiDistiller() is your friend.

You can write a custom distiller, that cleans up the resulting JSON – or define the Distiller on a per-Model-base using TypoScript.