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11.

Fancier Routes: Requirements, Wildcards, and More

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With all the new code organization, let's celebrate by creating another API endpoint to fetch a single starship. Start like usual: create a public function called, how about, get(). I'll include the optional Response return type. Above this add the #[Route] with a URL of /api/starships/... hmm. This time, the last part of the URL needs to be dynamic: it should match /api/starships/5 or /api/starships/25. How can we do that? How can we make a route match a wildcard?

The answer is by adding {, a name, the }.

The name inside this could be anything. No matter what, this route will now match /api/starships/*. But whatever you name this, you're now allowed to have an argument with a matching name: $id.

Below, dump this to make sure it's working.

26 lines | src/Controller/StarshipApiController.php
// ... lines 1 - 9
class StarshipApiController extends AbstractController
{
// ... lines 12 - 19
#[Route('/api/starships/{id}')]
public function get($id): Response
{
dd($id);
}
}

Restricting the Wildcard to be a Number

Ok! Zoom over to /api/starships/2 and... it is working!

In our app, the ID will be an integer. If I try something that is not an integers - like /wharf - the route still matches and calls our controller. And, that's almost always okay. In a real app, if we queried the database with WHERE ID = 'wharf', it wouldn't cause an error: it just wouldn't find a matching ship! And then we could trigger a 404 page, which I'll show you how to do soon.

But sometimes, we may want to restrict these values. We may want to say:

Only match this route if the wildcard is an integer.

To do that, inside the curly brace, after the name, add a <, > and inside, a regular expression \d+.

26 lines | src/Controller/StarshipApiController.php
// ... lines 1 - 9
class StarshipApiController extends AbstractController
{
// ... lines 12 - 19
#[Route('/api/starships/{id<\d+>}')]
public function get(int $id): Response
{
dd($id);
}
}

This means: match a digit of any length. With this setup, if we refresh the wharf URL, we get a 404 error. Our route simply wasn't matched - no route matched - so our controller was never called. But if we go back to /2, that still works.

And as an added benefit, now that this only matches digits, we can add an int type to the argument. Now, instead of the string 2, we get the integer 2. These details aren't super important, but I want you to know what options you have.

Restricting the Route HTTP Method

One thing that is common with APIs is to make routes only match a certain HTTP method, like GET or POST. For example, if you want to fetch all the starships, users should make a GET request... same if you want to fetch a single ship. If we kept building our API and created an endpoint that could be used to create a new Starship, the standard way to do that would be to use the same URL: /api/starships but with a POST request.

Right now, this wouldn't work. Every time the user requested /api/starships - no matter if they use a GET or POST request, it would match this first route.

For that reason, it's common in an API to add a methods option set to an array, with GET or POST. I'll do the same thing down here: methods: ['GET'].

26 lines | src/Controller/StarshipApiController.php
// ... lines 1 - 9
class StarshipApiController extends AbstractController
{
#[Route('/api/starships', methods: ['GET'])]
public function getCollection(StarshipRepository $repository): Response
// ... lines 14 - 19
#[Route('/api/starships/{id<\d+>}', methods: ['GET'])]
public function get(int $id): Response
// ... lines 22 - 24
}

I can't easily test this in a browser, but if we made a POST request to /api/starships/2, it would not match our route.

But we can see the change in our terminal. Run:

php bin/console debug:router

Perfect! Most routes match any method... but our two API routes only match if a GET request is made to that URL.

Prefixing Every Route URL

Ok, I have one more routing trick to show you... and this is a fun one! Every route in this controller starts with the same URL: /api/starships. Having the full URL in each route is fine. But if we want, we can automatically prefix each route's URL. Above the class, add a #[Route] attribute with /api/starships.

Unlike when we put this above a method, this does not create a route. It just says: every route in this class should be prefixed with this URL. So for the first route, remove the path entirely. And for the second, we only need the wildcard part.

27 lines | src/Controller/StarshipApiController.php
// ... lines 1 - 9
#[Route('/api/starships')]
class StarshipApiController extends AbstractController
{
#[Route('', methods: ['GET'])]
public function getCollection(StarshipRepository $repository): Response
// ... lines 15 - 20
#[Route('/{id<\d+>}', methods: ['GET'])]
public function get(int $id): Response
// ... lines 23 - 25
}

Try debug:router again... and watch these URLs:

php bin/console debug:router

They don't change!

Finishing the new API Endpoint

Okay. Let's finish our endpoint. We need to find the one ship that matches this ID. Normally we'd query the database: select * from ship where id = this ID. Our ships are hardcoded right now, but we can still do something that will look pretty much exactly like what it will, once we do have a database.

We already have a service - StarshipRepository - whose whole job is to fetch starship data. Let's give it a new superpower: the ability to fetch a single Starship for an id. Add public function find() with an int $id argument that will return a nullable Starship. So, a Starship if we find one for this id, else null.

Right now, the easiest way write this logic is to loop over $this->findAll() as $starship... then if $starship->getId() === $id, return $starship. I'll change my uf to if. Much better.

And if we didn't find anything, at the bottom, return null.

54 lines | src/Repository/StarshipRepository.php
// ... lines 1 - 7
class StarshipRepository
{
// ... lines 10 - 42
public function find(int $id): ?Starship
{
foreach ($this->findAll() as $starship) {
if ($starship->getId() === $id) {
return $starship;
}
}
return null;
}
}

Thanks to this, our controller is so simple. First, autowire the repository by adding an argument: StarshipRepository and just call it $repository. By the way, the order of arguments in a controller doesn't matter.

Then $starship = $repository->find($id). Finish at the bottom with return $this->json($starship).

29 lines | src/Controller/StarshipApiController.php
// ... lines 1 - 10
class StarshipApiController extends AbstractController
{
// ... lines 13 - 21
public function get(int $id, StarshipRepository $repository): Response
{
$starship = $repository->find($id);
return $this->json($starship);
}
}

I think we're ready! Refresh. It's perfect!

Triggering a 404 Page

But try an id that does not exist in our fake database - like /200. The word null is... not what we want. In this situation, we should return a response with a 404 status code.

To do that, we're going to follow a common pattern: query for an object, then check if it returned anything. If it did not return something, trigger a 404. Do that with throw $this->createNotFoundException(). I'll pass this a message.

33 lines | src/Controller/StarshipApiController.php
// ... lines 1 - 10
class StarshipApiController extends AbstractController
{
// ... lines 13 - 21
public function get(int $id, StarshipRepository $repository): Response
{
$starship = $repository->find($id);
if (!$starship) {
throw $this->createNotFoundException('Starship not found');
}
return $this->json($starship);
}
}

Notice the throw keyword: we're throwing a special exception that triggers a 404. That's nice because, as soon as it hits this line, nothing after will be executed.

Try it out! Yes! A 404 response! The message - "Starship not found" - is only shown to developers in dev mode. In production, a totally different page - or JSON - would be returned. You can check the docs for details on production error pages.

Next: let's build the HTML version of this page, a page that shows details about a single starship. Then we'll learn how to link between pages using the route name.