Create And Consume Simple REST API in PHP

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Representational State Transfer (REST) is an architectural style for building distributed systems and APIs. It relies on standard HTTP methods and status codes to enable communication between different systems.

In this guide, we will create a simple REST API in PHP that can perform CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations on a database. We will also create a separate PHP script to connect and consume this API.

Overview

Here is a quick overview of what we will do:

Set up a MySQL database with a users table
Create a PHP script (api.php) that handles REST API requests
Support CRUD operations:
Create new user (POST)
Get all users (GET)
Get single user by ID (GET)
Update user (PUT)
Delete user (DELETE)
Output JSON data
Create another PHP script (client.php) to connect and consume the API
Test the API using cURL and client script

Prerequisites

Before we start, make sure you have the following:

PHP 7.0 or higher
MySQL or MariaDB
Web server like Apache or Nginx
REST client like cURL or Postman (optional)

Database Setup

Let’s first create a simple users table in MySQL to store user records:

CREATE TABLE users (
  id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
  name VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
  email VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL
);

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Next, insert a couple rows for testing:

INSERT INTO users (name, email) 
VALUES ('John Doe', 'john@example.com'),
       ('Jane Doe', 'jane@example.com');

JavaScript

This will create a users table with some initial rows. We will perform CRUD operations on this table using our API.

API Script (api.php)

Now let’s create our main api.php script which will handle all the API requests and responses:

<?php

// Connect to MySQL database
$conn = mysqli_connect('localhost', 'username', 'password', 'mydatabase');

// Handle GET request - get all users
if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'GET' && !isset($_GET['id'])) {

  $sql = "SELECT * FROM users";

  $result = mysqli_query($conn, $sql);

  $users = mysqli_fetch_all($result, MYSQLI_ASSOC);

  echo json_encode($users);
  exit();

}

// Handle GET request - get single user
if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'GET' && isset($_GET['id'])) {

  $id = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_GET['id']);

  $sql = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE id=$id";

  $result = mysqli_query($conn, $sql);

  if (mysqli_num_rows($result) > 0) {
    $user = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result);
    echo json_encode($user);
  } else {
    echo json_encode(['message' => 'User not found']);
  }

  exit();

}

// Handle POST request - create new user
if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'POST') {

  $name = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_POST['name']);
  $email = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_POST['email']);

  $sql = "INSERT INTO users (name, email) VALUES ('$name', '$email')";

  if (mysqli_query($conn, $sql)) {
    $user_id = mysqli_insert_id($conn);
    echo json_encode(['id' => $user_id, 'name' => $name, 'email' => $email]);
  } else {
    echo json_encode(['message' => 'User creation failed']);
  }

  exit();

}

// Handle PUT request - update user
if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'PUT') {

  $id = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_GET['id']);

  $name = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_POST['name']);
  $email = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_POST['email']);

  $sql = "UPDATE users SET name='$name', email='$email' WHERE id=$id";

  if (mysqli_query($conn, $sql)) {
    echo json_encode(['message' => 'User updated successfully']);
  } else {
    echo json_encode(['message' => 'User update failed']);
  }

  exit();
}

// Handle DELETE request - delete user
if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'DELETE') {

  $id = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_GET['id']);

  $sql = "DELETE FROM users WHERE id=$id";

  if (mysqli_query($conn, $sql)) {
    echo json_encode(['message' => 'User deleted successfully']);
  } else {
    echo json_encode(['message' => 'User deletion failed']); 
  }

  exit();

}

// Return 404 if no routes matched
http_response_code(404);
echo json_encode(['message' => 'Not Found']);

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Let’s understand what’s happening above:

We connect to the MySQL database
Check $_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] to determine HTTP method
For GET requests, retrieve users from DB and json_encode() the output
For POST requests, insert new user into DB and return response
For PUT requests, update user and return response
For DELETE requests, delete user and return response
Return 404 with JSON error if no routes matched

This simple script handles all CRUD operations for our /users API endpoint.

You can save this as api.php and put it in your web server’s document root.

Consuming the API

To test our API, let’s create a simple client script that interacts with it.

Save this as client.php:

<?php

// Get all users
$users_url = 'http://localhost/api.php';
$users = file_get_contents($users_url);
echo $users . "\n\n";

// Get single user
$user_url = 'http://localhost/api.php?id=2'; 
$user = file_get_contents($user_url);
echo $user . "\n\n";

// Create user
$new_user = [
  'name' => 'Sam Smith',
  'email' => 'sam@example.com'
];

$create_url = 'http://localhost/api.php';
$response = file_get_contents($create_url, false, stream_context_create([
  'http' => [
    'method' => 'POST',
    'header' => 'Content-type: application/json',
    'content' => json_encode($new_user)
  ]
]));

echo $response . "\n\n";

// Update user
$updated_user = [
  'name' => 'Sam Smith Updated', 
  'email' => 'sam@example.com'  
];

$update_url = 'http://localhost/api.php?id=3'; 

$response = file_get_contents($update_url, false, stream_context_create([
  'http' => [
    'method' => 'PUT',
    'header' => 'Content-type: application/json',
    'content' => json_encode($updated_user) 
    ]
]));

echo $response . "\n\n";

// Delete user
$delete_url = 'http://localhost/api.php?id=3';

$response = file_get_contents($delete_url, false, stream_context_create([
  'http' => [
    'method' => 'DELETE'
  ]
]));

echo $response;

JavaScript

This scripts sends various requests to our API:

GET request to get all users
GET request to get single user
POST request to create new user
PUT request to update user
DELETE request to delete user

We can test this easily using cURL from the command line:

$ curl http://localhost/client.php

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This will invoke the client script which then interacts with our API.

The client script could also be expanded with error handling, output formatting etc. But this shows the basic idea of consuming our REST API from PHP.

Testing with cURL

Instead of using the client script, we can also test the API directly using cURL.

Get all users:

$ curl -i http://localhost/api.php

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2021 17:28:13 GMT
Server: Apache/2.4.25 (Debian)
Content-Type: application/json    
Content-Length: 119

[{"id":"1","name":"John Doe","email":"john@example.com"},{"id":"2","name":"Jane Doe","email":"jane@example.com"}]

JavaScript

Get single user:

$ curl -i http://localhost/api.php?id=2

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2021 17:30:44 GMT
Server: Apache/2.4.25 (Debian)   
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 45

{"id":"2","name":"Jane Doe","email":"jane@example.com"}

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Create user:

$ curl -i -X POST -d 'name=Sam Smith&email=sam@example.com' http://localhost/api.php

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2021 17:32:11 GMT
Server: Apache/2.4.25 (Debian)
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 62

{"id":"3","name":"Sam Smith","email":"sam@example.com"}

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Update user:

$ curl -i -X PUT -d 'name=Sam Smith Updated&email=sam@example.com' http://localhost/api.php?id=3

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2021 17:34:23 GMT
Server: Apache/2.4.25 (Debian)    
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 32

{"message":"User updated successfully"}

JavaScript

Delete user:

$ curl -i -X DELETE http://localhost/api.php?id=3 

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2021 17:36:44 GMT
Server: Apache/2.4.25 (Debian)
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 34

{"message":"User deleted successfully"}

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This allows us to manually test our API endpoints.

Conclusion

That’s it! In this guide, we created a simple REST API in PHP that handles CRUD operations using standard HTTP methods. We can consume it easily from any frontend using AJAX requests and JSON.

Here are some ways you can expand on this:

Add authentication
Support pagination for GET requests
Output different data formats like XML
Add more API endpoints and business logic
Containerize it using Docker
Deploy to a cloud server or PaaS

REST APIs are ubiquitous on the web and knowing how to build them in PHP is useful for many projects. This covers the basics but there is a lot more you can explore!

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Overview

Prerequisites

Database Setup

API Script (api.php)

Consuming the API

Testing with cURL

Conclusion

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