cakephp 4 - model without database - cakephp

In a cakephp 4 project in need to read data from a third party api.
I found this doc for cakephp 2, but no equivalent for cakephp 4.
https://book.cakephp.org/2/en/models/datasources.html
Where is it ?
Thanks

Read data from a third part api direct in your controller using HttpClient or other libs.
https://book.cakephp.org/4/en/core-libraries/httpclient.html

In CakePHP 4 the ORM is structured quite differently, data is retrieved via a Datasource, so you essentially need an HTTP-backed Datasource.
While CakePHP doesn't naively supply an HTTP source, there are a few of plugins that do, such as:
https://github.com/imsamurai/cakephp-httpsource-datasource
https://github.com/CakePHP-Copula/Copula
It looks like these may have some drawbacks and limitations - and in general be fairly advanced setups requiring some creative problem solving. So in the end, as the other poster mentioned, it may in the end be easier to just make HTTP requests directly if you don't require any of the ORM features (validation, Entity classes, virtual fields, Event hooks, etc.)

If the API communicate using POST/GET requests and responds using JSON format (which is usually the case), you can use the Request & Response Objects to ask and get data from the API

Related

Return observable from .net web api

Specifically my question is about how to return a true observable from a .netcore web api controller, using efcore. This is so datasets can be returned as a stream so the front end can start building the page at once using the data that it receives in the first iteration and keep on until all data has been received.
So I have seen observable collections. I have also seen that EFCore now streams rather than buffers.
Can anyone point me at the documentation, or an example so I can do more reading?
Let's say I am returning 20 records, from my web api and returning them to a reactjs project. Reactjs supports observables using rxjs. What do I need to do in the web api app to support this observable flow from sql server all the way up to the controller level?
I am not exactly sure what are you asking for , but the normal process is create a service which return a DTO, in your case an array of DTOs or a DTO which contains an array of DTOs.
And then you can send this info trough the controller.
I'm not sure if WebAPI is able to stream IObservable out-of-the-box (most probably not), so there are 2 options:
you can use SinglarR sockets to stream objects to frontend
You can return IAsyncEnumerable from controller. This way JSON serializer will stream the data element by element and frontend needs to start deserializing them before getting whole result
Personally, I'd use approach 2, unless you already use websockets in your project. In the controller it's mostly a matter of using ToAsyncEnumerable (here's a source), but you need to verify, if your frontend libraries support that

Best practices for model validation using a REST API and a javascript front-end such as Angular

I'm transitioning towards more responsive front-end web apps and I have a question about model validation. Here's the set-up: the server has a standard REST API for inserting, updating, retrieving, etc. This could be written in Node or Java Spring, it doesn't matter. The front-end is written with something like Angular (or similar).
What I need is to figure out where to put the validation code. Here's the requirements:
All validation code should be written in one place only. Not both client and server. this implies that it should reside on the server, inside the REST API when persisting.
The front-end should be capable of understanding validation errors from the server and associating them to the particular field that caused the error. So if the field "username" is mandatory, the client can place an error next to that field saying "Username is mandatory".
It should be possible to validate correct variable types. So if we were expecting a number or a date and got a string instead, the error would be something like "'Yo' is not a correct date."
The error messages should be localized to the user's language.
Can anyone help me out? I need something simple and robust.
Thanks
When validating your input and it fails you can return a response in appropriate format (guessing you use JSON) to contain the error messages along with a proper HTTP error code.
Just working on a project with a Symfony backend, using FOSRestBundle to provide proper REST API. Using the form component of Symfony whenever there's a problem with the input a well structured JSON response is generated with error messages mapped to the fields or the top level if for example there's unexpected input.
After much research I found a solution using the Meteor.js platform. Since it's a pure javascript solution running on both the server and the client, you can define scripts once and have them run on both the client and the server.
From the official Meteor documentation:
Files outside the client, server and tests subdirectories are loaded on both the client and the server! That's the place for model definitions and other functions.
Wow. Defining models and validation scripts only once is pretty darn cool if you ask me. Also, there's no need to map between JSON and whatever server-side technology. Plus, no ORM mapping to get it in the DB. Nice!
Again, from the docs:
In Meteor, the client and server share the same database API. The same exact application code — like validators and computed properties — can often run in both places. But while code running on the server has direct access to the database, code running on the client does not. This distinction is the basis for Meteor's data security model.
Sounds good to me. Here's the last little gem:
Input validation: Meteor allows your methods and publish functions to take arguments of any JSON type. (In fact, Meteor's wire protocol supports EJSON, an extension of JSON which also supports other common types like dates and binary buffers.) JavaScript's dynamic typing means you don't need to declare precise types of every variable in your app, but it's usually helpful to ensure that the arguments that clients are passing to your methods and publish functions are of the type that you expect.
Anyway, sounds like I've found the a solution to the problem. If anyone else knows of a way to define validation once and have it run on both client and server please post an answer below, I'd love to hear it.
Thanks all.
To be strict, your last gate keeper of validation for any CRUD operations is of course on server-side. I do not know what is your concern that you should handle your validation on one end only(either server or client), but usually doing on both sides is better for both user experience and performance.
Say your username field is a mandatory field. This field can be easily handled in front-end side; before a user click submit and then been sent to the server and then get returned and shows the error code. You can save that round trip with a one liner code in front-end.
Of course, one may argue that from client-side the bad guys may manipulate the data and thus bypassing the front-end validation. That goes to my first point - your final gate keeper in validation should be on your server-side. That's why, data integrity is still the server's job. Make sure whatever that goes into your database is clean, dry and valid.
To answer you question, (biased opinion though) AngularJS is still a pretty awesome framework to let you do front-end validation, as well as providing a good way to do server-side error handling.

Mobile application backend

I'm currently developing a mobile application that will fetch data from server by request (page load) or by notification received (e.g. GCM).
Currently I'm starting to think about how to build the backend for that app.
I thought about using PHP to handle the http requests to my database (mySQL) and to return the response as JSON. As I see it there are many ways to implement such server and would like to hear to hear thoughts about my ideas for implementations:
1. create a single php page that will receive an Enum/Query, execute and send the results.
2. create a php page for every query needs to be made.
Which of my implementations should I use? if none please suggest another. Thank you.
P.S, this server will only use as a fetcher for SQL and push notifications. if you have any suggestion past experience about how to perform it (framework, language, anything that comes to mind) I'd be happy to learn.
You can use PHP REST Data services framework https://github.com/chaturadilan/PHP-Data-Services
I am also looking for information about how to power a web and mobile application that has to get and save data on the server.
I've been working with a PHP framework such as Yii Framework, and I know that this framework, and others, have the possibility to create a API/Web service.
APIS can be SOAP or REST, you should read about the differences of both to see wich is best for mobile. I think the main and most important one is that for SOAP, you need a Soap Client library on the device you are trying to connect, but for REST you just make a http request to the url.
I have built a SOAP API with Yii, is quite easy, and I have use it to communicate between two websites, to get and put data in the same database.
As for your question regarding to use one file or multiple files for every request, in the case of SOAP built on Yii, you have to normally define all the functions available to the API on the server side in only one file(controller) and to connect to that webservice you end up doing:
$client=new SoapClient("url/of/webservice);
$result=$client->methodName($param1, $param2, etc..);
So basically what you get is that from your client, you can run any method defined on the server side with the parameters that you wish.
Assuming that you use to work program php in the "classic way" I suggest you should start learning a framework, there are many reasons to do it but in the end, it is because the code will result more clean and stable, for example:
You shouldn't be writing manual queries (sometimes yes), but you can use the framework's models to handle data validation and storage into the database.
Here are some links:
http://www.larryullman.com/series/learning-the-yii-framework/
http://www.yiiframework.com/doc/guide/1.1/en/topics.webservice
http://www.yiiframework.com/wiki/175/how-to-create-a-rest-api/
As I said, I am also looking to learn how to better power a mobile application, I know this can be achieved with a API, but I don't know if that is the only way.
create a single php page that will receive an Enum/Query, execute and send the results.
I created a single PHP file named api.php that does exactly this, the project is named PHP-CRUD-API. It is quite popular.
It should take care of the boring part of the job and provides a sort of a framework to get started.
Talking about frameworks: you can integrate the script in Laravel, Symfony or SlimPHP to name a few.

UTF-8 For Restful Services

Currently i enable UTF-8 as #Consumes("application/xml;charset=utf-8") in the RESTful Services for the different methods. I am interested to see if we can change this for all REST services with a single configuration change. We are using CXF, maybe there is something it provides?
Thanks
Ravi
The first question is are you sure you want to prevent any of your rest resources from accepting non-UTF-8 entities? Such an across the board proclamation feels like it could cause trouble down the road.
I'll admit that I haven't used CXF so I can't speak to those specifics. But I can think of one option each under the JAX-RS and Servlet APIs which might be along the lines of what you seek to accomplish.
Using the Servlet API: Depending on how you are deploying your application you might be able to create and inject a servlet filter. In the doFilter method, you can check the encoding of the request entity and continue on to the next part of the filter chain (ultimately to the rest application). If an improper entity is sent on the request, you would just set the appropriate HTTP 415 status onto the response and not invoke your rest application.
Using JAX-RS: Depending on how you parse/accept the entity body in your resources, you could create and inject a custom MessageBodyReader implementation. This reader could parse your entity, ensuring that it is UTF-8 only and throw an appropriate exception otherwise.

GWT: Where (how) to define POJOs to make em available for client and server? (and to use datastore on serverside)

I try to get an application running which should interact with a server via RPC (JDO in Google DataStore). So I defined a persistent POJO on the server-side to get it put in the datastore via the PersistenceManager (as shown in the gwt rpc tuts). Everything works fine. But I am not able to receive the callback POJO on the client side because the POJO is only defined on server-side. How can I realize it, that the client knows that kind of object??
(sry for my bad english)
Lars
Put your POJOs in a separate package/directory (e.g. com.example.common) and then add source declaration to your GWT module descriptor (xyz.gwt.xml):
<source path="common"/> //relative to your xyz.gwt.xml location
GWT compiler will then also compile POJOs and they will be seen by your other GWT code.
Edited:
#Lars - now I understand your problem. As I see it you have several options:
If possible use Objectify instead of JDO. Objectify uses pure POJOs and they play nicely with GWT. I use this in my projects. One nice thing that Objectify gives you is #PostLoad & # PrePersist on methods to run some code before/after POJOs are loaded/saved to datastore. I use this to handle serialization of GeoPoint for instance.
Use JDO and make copies of your domain classes. This is a pain but it would work. Use 'transient' java keyword in your server JDO classes to exclude fields you do not want to RPC.
Edit #2: There is a third option that you might prefer:
Create "fake" JDO annotation classes using super-sourcing. This is a common technique to replace classes with a GWT version. Described here: http://fredsa.allen-sauer.com/2009/04/1st-look-at-app-engine-using-jdo.html
You can use DTO(stackoverflow, moar) for transferring data to client.
Basic sample here (method getTenLatestEntries() in your case).
Or you can use some third-party libraries like objectify and stop worry about making DTO`s.

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