最佳实践，以及如何在Symfony2中从iOS AFNetworking中获取POST数据并在GET中返回JSON？

Question

I am building a mobile app (iOS) and Symfony2 REST backend. On Symfony2, my routes are working correctly and I have tested them with AJAX and httpie, all CRUD operations, etc are fine. Now, I am trying to access the routes from the app. So far, I can access the routes and when I look into the Symfony2 Profiler, I can see entries in last 10 entries to verify that I am hitting the server with my POST and GET requests. Now, I have 2 questions and I would be glad if people can point me in the direction for ** Best Practices ** on how to proceed.

Problem 1: Although I am posting data which I can see coming in under "Request", when I try to create a record, it creates only NULL records, meaning the data is being lost. This is my controller for creating users for example:

public function postUserAction(Request $request)
{
    $content = $this->get('request')->getContent();
    $serializer = $this->get('jms_serializer');
    $entity = $serializer->deserialize($content, 'Name\BundleName\Entity\User', 'json');

        $em = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager();
        $em->persist($entity);
        $em->flush();

    return array(
        'entity' => $entity,
    );
}

When I look into the log, the only things that stand out are: Request Cookies (No cookies), Request Content: "Request content not available (it was retrieved as a resource)." This tells me the data was missing, how can I get this data and use it? Or what else could it be?

Problem 2: GET returns an empty JSON response with no data just the keys when I NSlog (echo it). My code looks like:

public function getUsersAction()
{
    $em = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager();

    $entities = $em->getRepository('NameBundle:User')->findAll();

    return array(
        'entities' => $entities,
    );
}

From the log, it has the Request Cookies set: PHPSESSID => "1udududjjs83883jdlb4ho0j4" but again the Request Content says: "Request content not available (it was retrieved as a resource)." How can I make it return the data with the JSON? This works well in the browser AJAX and httpie tests.

Problem 3: Using AFNetworking, I have a symbolic constant which I set as the APIHost (IP Address) and APIPath was the folder. Now in my earlier version using native PHP, I constructed the actual code to be executed in index.php by sending the parameter in JSON so if I wanted a login, I sent something like todo:login but with Symfony2, I am not sure or know even the best practices for this case. Ideally, I would like to specify the server-side request in the JSON request and then find the correct route in Symfony2 but is this how to do it and if yes, can you please provide an example? The workaround is to specify hard coded paths in AFNetworking each time I need to make a request which I think tightly couples the code and I need to make changes in a lot of places anytime something changes on the server side. Thanks and sorry for the long question!

Answer 1

You expect the jmsserializer to do magic for you. But it won't, you have to configure it first. From you code I can see that you are using jmsserializer wrong.

In getUsersAction() you have to return a serialized response, but you are returning an array of objects. This would be the right way:

public function getUsersAction()
{
    $em = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager();

    $entities = $em->getRepository('NameBundle:User')->findAll();
    $serializer = $container->get('jms_serializer');

    return array(
        'users' => $jsonContent = $serializer->serialize($entities, 'json');,
    );
}

Your post action basically looks ok, however when the json does not contain every field of entity USER the deserialization will fail. You can configure the entity for serialization/deserialization using annotations.

http://jmsyst.com/libs/serializer/master/reference/annotations

I am not sure if I understood your last problem, but I think you have to hardcode the path in your app.

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Symfony2 is great and absolutely useful when writing an API. But if you don't want to deal with serialization/deserialization you can give http://laravel.com/ a try. It is build on symfony and you can generate an api on the fly.