Provide API for Admidio

ximex commented 9 years ago

Split Admidio in Backend-REST-API and Frontend-Page, so the backend logic is completely separated from the design. The normal Frontend page and the Appmidio App e.g. access the same REST-API from ONE Backend. All the data is requested with REST calls (javascript) So we could change each part (Backend/Frontend). E.g. use nodejs with express.js as backend

Fasse commented 9 years ago

I have renamed this to be short. I think about this since several years and it would be a very nice und useful change. But since now I havn't the time to start with this.

If someone has the time and motivation than I will support this immediatly. It will be useful to start with one thing and not the whole program. Maybe the login could be a good beginning. If we have here an API than other programs could perform a login to Admidio very easy.

The backend should not be nodejs because therefore something must be installed on the server (as I understand). It could also be just PHP and all data that will be returned is JSON (maybe later we could also provide other formats).

ximex commented 9 years ago

I only mean that than it is possible to change also the backend and the whole thing would still work. Nodejs is only one example. The main backend would stay in PHP.

The problem with nodejs today is only that nearly no hoster provides nodejs. And only less people have a root server to install nodejs on their own. But there is no problem with nodejs and JSON. nodejs is javascript and JSON is a subset of javascript. So nothing would work better with JSON than nodejs. Working with nodejs is what i'm doing at work for about nearly a year ;-)

I think the same like you that we should start with the login and add more and more features. But i want to plan some things, like how the routes should look, or what authentication system we would use.

We (the company i work) are building a cloud system with REST-API in the last half year and i think, i could show you some best practise we learned. E.g we use JsonWebToken for the auth. (http://jwt.io/) For the API Documentation i would introduce you "swagger" (http://swagger.io/) Here a small doc of our service: https://gemodev.msgis.net/api/developer/

Another thing is: We should use the HTTP methods and response codes that are available. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol#HTTP-Anfragemethoden https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP-Statuscode#Liste_der_HTTP-Statuscodes E.g.: NO: GET /someApiRoute/user/12/delete YES: DELETE /someApiRoute/user/12 or NO: GET /someApiRoute/user/create -> StatusCode: 200 YES: POST /someApiRoute/user/ -> StatusCode: 201

The easiest way to auth would be the "basic auth". (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_access_authentication)

ximex commented 9 years ago

this looks like a very nice framework: http://www.slimframework.com/ i will look at it in detail in the next days

v2.0 requires PHP 5.3+ v3.0 requires PHP 5.5+ (in development)

ximex commented 9 years ago

PHP 5.4 Support end was 14.09.2015. (https://secure.php.net/supported-versions.php) So i think if we start with the rest api concept we should drop PHP 5.4 and use slimframework v3.0. The patterns are nearly the same as of express.js which is the very most popular rest api framework and works really nice. (already working about nearly a year with express.js) The documentation of v3.0 is here: http://www.slimframework.com/docs

We still could improve Admidio 3.x after the release (v4.0?) of the new version with the rest api. So one for the old way and backward compatibility and one new build from scratch

ximex commented 8 years ago

Other Frameworks we should look at:

ximex commented 8 years ago

I think routes should look like: