WEBVTT

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If you want to build an API, you
can absolutely do that with Symfony.

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In fact, it's a fantastic option
in part, because of API Platform.

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That's a framework for creating
APIs built on top of Symfony

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that both makes building your API fast

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and creates an API that's more
robust than you could imagine.

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But, it's also simple enough to
return JSON from a controller.

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Let's see if we can return
some ship data as JSON.

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This will be our second page.

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Well, it's really an "endpoint", but this
will be our second route & controller combo.

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In MainController, we could
add another method here.

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But for organization, let's create
a totally new controller class.

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I'll go to New -> PHP Class and
call it StarshipApiController.

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Because I went to New -> PHP Class, it
created the class and the namespace for me.

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Super nice!

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Also, going forward, each
time I create a controller,

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I'll immediately extend AbstractController...

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because those shortcuts are
nice and there's no downside.

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Add a public function getCollection()

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because this will return info
about a collection of starships.

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And, like always, you can add the
Response return type or skip it.

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Above this, add the route with #[Route()].

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Select the one from Attribute and hit tab.

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So I just used auto-completion
to add the use statements

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for AbstractController, Route, and Response.

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Make sure you have all of those.

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For the URL, how about /api/starships.

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Inside, I'll paste a $starships
variable that's set to an array

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of three associative arrays of starship data.

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You can probably imagine
how this will look as JSON.

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How do we turn it into JSON?

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Well, it can be this simple: return new
Response with json_encode($starships).

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But we can do better!

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Instead, return $this->json($starships).

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Let's try it!

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Find your browser and head to /api/starships.

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Dang, that was easy.

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If you're wondering why the JSON is styled
and looks cool, that's not a Symfony thing.

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I have a Chrome extension
installed called JSONVue.

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Now in the real world, when we start querying
the database, we're going to be working

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with objects, not associative arrays.

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We won't add a database in this
tutorial, but we can start using objects

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for our data to make things more realistic.

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In the src/ directory, create a
new subdirectory called Model.

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Ok, important thing: what we're about to do
has absolutely nothing to do with Symfony.

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I'm simply looking at this array
and thinking: You know what?

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Instead of passing around this associative array
with name, class, captain, and status keys,

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I'd rather have a Starship
class and pass around objects.

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So entirely on my own, independent of Symfony,
I've decided to create a Model directory -

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this could be called anything - and
inside a new class called Starship.

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And because this class is just to help us,
we get to make it look however we want,

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and it doesn't need to extend any base class.

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Create a public function __construct()
with five properties: a private int $id,

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then four more properties for each of
the four keys that we have in the array:

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private string $name, private string $class,

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private string $captain and
private string $status.

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Oh, and my editor is highlighting this
file because we installed PHP-CS-Fixer

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and that found a code style violation.

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I can click this to fix it or go here
and hit Alt+Enter to do the fix there.

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Super nice!

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Anyway, if you're not familiar with this
constructor syntax, this creates a constructor

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with five arguments and, at the same time,
creates five properties that will be set

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to whatever we pass to these arguments.

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But, because I decided to
make these properties private,

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if we did instantiate a new Starship object...

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we wouldn't be able to read any of the data!

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To allow that, we can create getter methods.

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But, I'm not going to do this by hand.

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Instead, go to the Code -> Generate
menu option - or Cmd + N on a Mac -

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select getters then generate
a getter for every property.

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Nice! Five shiny new, public getter method.

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Ok, back in our controller, let's convert these
arrays to objects: new Starship() - hit tab,

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so it adds the use statement - then
give this an id of, how about, 1...

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and transfer the other values for name,
class, captain, and finally status.

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And just like that, we have our first object!

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I'll highlight the other two arrays and
paste in the two objects to save time.

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We now have an array of 3 Starship objects...

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which feels nicer.

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And we're passing those to $this->json().

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Is that still going to work?

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Totally not!

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We get an array of three empty objects!

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That's because, internally, $this->json()
uses the PHP json_encode() function...

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and that function can't handle
private properties.

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What we need is something smarter:
something that can recognize that,

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even though the name property is
private, we have a public getName() method

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that can be called to read
that property's value.

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Is there a tool that does that?

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Well, remember how Symfony is a huge set of
components that solve individual problems?

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One component is called serializer,
and its whole job is

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to take objects and serialize them to JSON...

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or take JSON and deserialize
that back into objects.

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And it can totally handle situations

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where you have private properties
with public getter methods.

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So let's get it installed!

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composer require serializer And once
more folks, yes, this is an alias...

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and it's an alias to a pack.

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This pack installs the symfony/serializer
package as well as a few others

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that make it work in a really robust way.

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Now, without doing anything else,
go back, refresh, and it works?

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How? It turns out that the
$this->json() method is smart.

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To peek at it, hold Command on a Mac or Ctrl on
other machines and click the method name to jump

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into the core Symfony file where this lives.

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Ah! The code here won't make total sense yet,

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but it detects if the serializer
system is available....

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and if it is, uses that to
transform the object to JSON.

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But, what do I mean by "serializer
system" exactly?

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And what is the serializer key...

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inside this container thing?

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Or, what if we needed to transform an object
to JSON somewhere other than our controller...

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where we don't have access
to the ->json() shortcut?

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How could we access the serializer
system from there?

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Friends, it's time to learn about the most
important concept in Symfony: services.