PHP – Create a REST API with CodeIgniter

Introduction

CodeIgniter is a fairly simple framework for PHP. Compared to its big brothers such as Zend or Yii, it has the advantage of being small and very simple to get to grips with. For me, currently the best for small projects such as creating a REST-API.

Installation

To start, go download the official version on GitHub https://github.com/philsturgeon/codeigniter-restserver

Unzip everything in the right place. Then go into the application/config/config.php file and indicate the base_url

$config['base_url'] - 'http://api.local';

this is of course the URL of your API.

The URLs

If the server is correctly configured, by calling the base_url, the default page will appear

htaccess

To not have the index.php in the URL, you need to write a .htaccess and place it at the root of your site.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %-REQUEST_FILENAME!-f
RewriteCond %-REQUEST_FILENAME!-d
RewriteRule $$/index.php/$1

Controller

Then you can check the /controllers/api folder where you will find the example.php controller. By analyzing it you can guess that the minimum for your controller is:

response(array('error' => 'test'), 404);
   }
}
?>

to see the result, just call api.local/api/example/test

   test