Yii2 BackOffice with API REST Implementation

Question

I have developed an app in Yii2 that is as a backoffice for a Travel Agency.

I have used the basic start template, and used gii (code generator) to create the CRUDS for the models (Hotels, HotelRooms, HotelImages, etc)

I also want to create two different front-end applications (one for retail, and the other for other agencies), and I thought to separate it from the backend (maybe an angular.js app) and get the info through REST could be a good approach.

So I want to use the API Rest based on the models made with gii.

How can I achieve this? I have read this: http://www.yiiframework.com/doc-2.0/guide-rest-quick-start.html

and It says that I have to switch the controllers.

Currently I have (generated with gii)

class HotelController extends Controller

and reading the guide it says that I have to use

class HotelController extends ActiveController

but if I make this change, the backoffice does not work anymore.

What would be the best approach?

Make another APIHotelController that extends ActiveController?

Can I merge (in some sort of way) with the gii generated controller?

Any other way to achieve this separation of layers (back-front) ?

Thanks!

Answer 1

The most elegant solution I know so far to build a REST API Yii2 web app without messing up with the existent code or the routes configurations is by building a REST API as a separate sub-application containing MVC elements by itself, which means in Yii's world : as a module.

You already have a working code, accessible within the web folder, it has it's own Entry Scripts within the index.php file, its own server configurations (.htaccess file if using apache) and its own app configurations within the config folder to which your app will depend before parsing your URL's and rendering your view files within their related controllers and models.

So the idea is to create a new web folder, lets call it api for example, with its own Entry Scripts file, own server configurations, own config folder and own controllers extending the ActiveController class.

Then both, your web app and api service will share the same models files to validate, store or retrieve data.

Your app will move from this basic template based structure :

+ assets
+ config
+ controllers
+ models
+ views
+ web
...

To this new structure (from the tutorial linked below) :

+ web
+ config
+ controllers
...
+ api
  + config
  + modules
    + v1
      + controllers
  .htaccess
  index.php

You will need then to register your api service as separate module in order to work and being initialized by Yii.

Then you will use different URLs to get to your web app and related views or Rest api and related json/xml outputs respectively within http://[your_path]/web/controller/action or http://[your_path]/api/v1/controller/action (url structure depends on your web and api configs).

In order to implement the necessary code, here is a great step by step tutorial. It uses the basic template structure and follows yii's api versionning approach (the v1 folder).