Model
Create a basic Model
Before using Alambic we need to create a basic configuration to describe:
- the data structure: Types
- how data can be fetched: Connectors
Models can be constructed as PHP arrays or directly loaded from Json configuration files.
Create the following directories for storing config files
- /schema
- /schema/connectors
- /schema/models
Setup connectors list
For this simple example, we will just use one of the built-in connectors: the Json connector, which map your types to json files. One key strength of Alambic is that a single API endpoint can handle multiple connectors.
Create the files.json file in /schema/connectors
Setup types
Types describe the objects than can be requested, and the relations between theses objects
We’ll first configure the Users model.
Create the users.json file in /schema/models
The following table describes the main properties of the users model:
| Property | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| name | String | Model name |
| description | String | Model description |
| fields | Array | The user model exposes its native fields (“id” and “name”) and a new field “posts” as we would like to be able to retrieve a user along with his posts in one single request. Alambic can handle multiple types of relations between models (has one, has many, embeds one, embeds many, …) even through multiple datasources |
| singleEndpoint | String | The single endpoint “user” allows to request for one user at a time, based on the user id |
| multiEndpoint | String | The multi endpoint “users” allows to request a list of users |
| connector | Object | We will use the simple connector that we setup previously to fetch/write the users data in the users.json file |
The Post model is pretty similar to the User one.
Create the posts.json file in /schema/models
Create an Alambic instance
Our alambic configuration is now complete, we just need to create a request endpoint to be able to request it.