Installation
Via Composer (create-project)
You can use the create-project
command from Composer
to create the project in one go:
$ composer create-project laminas-api-tools/api-tools-skeleton path/to/install
Via Git (clone)
First, clone the repository:
$ git clone https://github.com/laminas-api-tools/api-tools-skeleton.git # optionally, specify the directory in which to clone
$ cd path/to/install
At this point, you need to use Composer to install dependencies. Assuming you already have Composer:
$ composer install
All methods
PHP 7.1+ users
If you are on PHP 7.1 or greater, you will want to prepare your skeleton to use the latest versions of dependencies, as several dependencies have new major releases that can make use of the newer PHP versions. To do this, execute the following within your project root:
$ rm composer.lock && rm -rf vendor $ composer install
and answer any prompts as they occur.
Once you have the basic installation, you need to put it in development mode:
$ cd path/to/install
$ composer development-enable # put the skeleton in development mode
Now, fire it up! Do one of the following:
- Create a vhost in your web server that points the DocumentRoot to the
public/
directory of the project (hardest!). - Use the built-in vagrant configuration:
vagrant up
. - Use the built-in docker-compose configuration:
docker-compose up
. - Fire up the built-in web server in PHP (note: do not use this for production!)
In the latter case, do the following:
cd path/to/install
php -S 0.0.0.0:8080 -ddisplay_errors=0 -t public public/index.php
You can then visit the site at http://localhost:8080/ - which will bring up a welcome page and the ability to visit the dashboard in order to create and inspect your APIs.
NOTE ABOUT OPCACHE
Disable all opcode caches when running the admin!
The admin cannot and will not run correctly when an opcode cache, such as APC or OpCache, is enabled. API Tools does not use a database to store configuration; instead, it uses PHP configuration files. Opcode caches will cache these files on first load, leading to inconsistencies as you write to them, and will typically lead to a state where the admin API and code become unusable.
The admin is a development tool, and intended for use a development environment. As such, you should likely disable opcode caching, regardless.
When you are ready to deploy your API to production, however, you can disable development mode, thus disabling the admin interface, and safely run an opcode cache again. Doing so is recommended for production due to the tremendous performance benefits opcode caches provide.
NOTE ABOUT DISPLAY_ERRORS
The
display_errors
php.ini
setting is useful in development to understand what warnings, notices, and error conditions are affecting your application. However, they cause problems for APIs: APIs are typically a specific serialization format, and error reporting is usually in either plain text, or, with extensions like XDebug, in HTML. This breaks the response payload, making it unusable by clients.For this reason, we recommend disabling
display_errors
when using the API Tools admin interface. This can be done using the-ddisplay_errors=0
flag when using the built-in PHP web server, or you can set it in your virtual host or server definition. If you disable it, make sure you have reasonable error log settings in place. For the built-in PHP web server, errors will be reported in the console itself; otherwise, ensure you have an error log file specified in your configuration.
display_errors
should never be enabled in production, regardless.