ArrestDB

ArrestDB is a "plug-n-play" RESTful API for SQLite, MySQL and PostgreSQL databases.

ArrestDB provides a REST API that maps directly to your database stucture with no configuation.

Lets suppose you have set up ArrestDB at http://api.example.com/ and that your database has a table named customers. To get a list of all the customers in the table you would simply need to do:

GET http://api.example.com/customers/

As a response, you would get a JSON formatted list of customers.

Or, if you only want to get one customer, then you would append the customer id to the URL:

GET http://api.example.com/customers/123/

Requirements

PHP 5.4+ & PDO
SQLite / MySQL / PostgreSQL

Installation

Edit index.php and change the $dsn variable located at the top, here are some examples:

SQLite: $dsn = 'sqlite://./path/to/database.sqlite';
MySQL: $dsn = 'mysql://[user[:pass]@]host[:port]/db/;
PostgreSQL: $dsn = 'pgsql://[user[:pass]@]host[:port]/db/;

If you want to restrict access to allow only specific IP addresses, add them to the $clients array:

$clients = array
(
    '127.0.0.1',
    '127.0.0.2',
    '127.0.0.3',
);

After you're done editing the file, place it in a public directory (feel free to change the filename).

If you're using Apache, you can use the following mod_rewrite rules in a .htaccess file:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine   On
    RewriteCond     %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteCond     %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule     ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [L,QSA]
</IfModule>

Nota bene: You must access the file directly, including it from another file won't work.

API Design

The actual API design is very straightforward and follows the design patterns of the majority of APIs.

(C)reate > POST   /table
(R)ead   > GET    /table[/id]
(R)ead   > GET    /table[/column/content]
(U)pdate > PUT    /table/id
(D)elete > DELETE /table/id

To put this into practice below are some example of how you would use the ArrestDB API:

# Get all rows from the "customers" table
GET http://api.example.com/customers/

# Get a single row from the "customers" table (where "123" is the ID)
GET http://api.example.com/customers/123/

# Get all rows from the "customers" table where the "country" field matches "Australia" (`LIKE`)
GET http://api.example.com/customers/country/Australia/

# Get 50 rows from the "customers" table
GET http://api.example.com/customers/?limit=50

# Get 50 rows from the "customers" table ordered by the "date" field
GET http://api.example.com/customers/?limit=50&by=date&order=desc

# Create a new row in the "customers" table where the POST data corresponds to the database fields
POST http://api.example.com/customers/

# Update customer "123" in the "customers" table where the PUT data corresponds to the database fields
PUT http://api.example.com/customers/123/

# Delete customer "123" from the "customers" table
DELETE http://api.example.com/customers/123/

Please note that GET calls accept the following query string variables:

by (column to order by)
- order (order direction: ASC or DESC)
limit (LIMIT x SQL clause)
- offset (OFFSET x SQL clause)

Additionally, POST and PUT requests accept JSON-encoded and/or zlib-compressed payloads.

POST and PUT requests are only able to parse data encoded in application/x-www-form-urlencoded. Support for multipart/form-data payloads will be added in the future.

If your client does not support certain methods, you can use the X-HTTP-Method-Override header:

PUT = POST + X-HTTP-Method-Override: PUT
DELETE = GET + X-HTTP-Method-Override: DELETE

Alternatively, you can also override the HTTP method by using the _method query string parameter.

Since 1.5.0, it's also possible to atomically INSERT a batch of records by POSTing an array of arrays.

Responses

All responses are in the JSON format. A GET response from the customers table might look like this:

[
    {
        "id": "114",
        "customerName": "Australian Collectors, Co.",
        "contactLastName": "Ferguson",
        "contactFirstName": "Peter",
        "phone": "123456",
        "addressLine1": "636 St Kilda Road",
        "addressLine2": "Level 3",
        "city": "Melbourne",
        "state": "Victoria",
        "postalCode": "3004",
        "country": "Australia",
        "salesRepEmployeeNumber": "1611",
        "creditLimit": "117300"
    },
    ...
]

Successful POST responses will look like:

{
    "success": {
        "code": 201,
        "status": "Created"
    }
}

Successful PUT and DELETE responses will look like:

{
    "success": {
        "code": 200,
        "status": "OK"
    }
}

Errors are expressed in the format:

{
    "error": {
        "code": 400,
        "status": "Bad Request"
    }
}

The following codes and message are avaiable:

200 OK
201 Created
204 No Content
400 Bad Request
403 Forbidden
404 Not Found
409 Conflict
503 Service Unavailable

Also, if the callback query string is set and is valid, the returned result will be a JSON-P response:

callback(JSON);

Ajax-like requests will be minified, whereas normal browser requests will be human-readable.

Changelog

1.2.0 ~~support for JSON payloads in POST and PUT (optionally gzipped)~~
1.3.0 ~~support for JSON-P responses~~
1.4.0 ~~support for HTTP method overrides using the X-HTTP-Method-Override header~~
1.5.0 ~~support for bulk inserts in POST~~
1.6.0 ~~added support for PostgreSQL~~
1.7.0 ~~fixed PostgreSQL connection bug, other minor improvements~~
1.8.0 ~~fixed POST / PUT bug introduced in 1.5.0~~
1.9.0 ~~updated to PHP 5.4 short array syntax~~

Credits

ArrestDB is a complete rewrite of Arrest-MySQL with several optimizations and additional features.

alixaxel / ArrestDB

readme