Investigate available PHP REST API frameworks.

[joshproehl]

Which one do we want to use? Or are we going to roll our own?

Positives and negatives of each should be recorded here to be weighed.

[joshproehl]

Bullet PHP

Main website

Pros

• Based around routing
• Doesn't enforce MVC
• Minimal framework, doesn't add much cruft at all.

Cons

• Code structure

Thoughts

I like the routing-based structure, but reading the code is a bit better if standing on your head. Because of the "handle if you can, if not try and consume the next bit of the route" structure I'm not entirely certain I like the way the code ends up looking, it doesn't seem super intuitive.

[joshproehl]

Restler

main website Github page

Pros

• Creates API docs automaticall
• Focuses on encapsulating business logic rather than raw code (Makes for clean and easy to understand code)
• Easy routing (All public methods mapped to URL automatically)
• Defaults to using JSON. (Built in and easy to manage)
• Source code includes examples. (And documentatino seems good.)

Cons

• V3 is in RC status. Which version? (Is the RC stable enough?)

Thoughts

Restler is my favorite so far. I haven't created any example projects with it yet, but I believe I'll try to set something up and get some first hand experience to see if it lives up to promise.

[pgicking]

Guzzle

http://guzzle.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

This is what I came up in my google search, on a more thorough look, it looks like its only for client side.

[pgicking]

Slim

http://www.slimframework.com/

Pros

• Lots of good documentation
• Microframework
• Built in debugger

Cons

• Same weird step-through based (instead of function based) like Bullet PHPH code that is hard to understand

Thoughts

Looks really cool honestly but the code style is a huge turn off to using this framework, I like restlers style of having functions/classes for handing doGet and doPost because its what makes the most conceptual sense to me.

[joshproehl]

Restler chosen, closing issue.