REST Webservices with PHP in 3 Steps

1. Send Everything to index.php  using .htaccess 

RewriteEngine On    
RewriteBase /     

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f    
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d    
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [L] 

2. Figure Out What Was Requested 

class Request
{    
public $url_elements;    
public $verb;    
public $parameters;      
public function __construct()
{        
   $this->verb = $_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'];        
   $this->url_elements = explode('/', $_SERVER['PATH_INFO']); 

<continued below in Step 3>

3. Process Incoming Data  according to format

<continued from Step 2> 

   $this->parseIncomingParams();        

// initialise json as default format        

   $this->format = 'json';        

   if(isset($this->parameters['format']))

   {            

     $this->format = $this->parameters['format'];        

    }

        

return true;    

} //end of public function __construct()   

public function parseIncomingParams()

{        

  $parameters = array();          

// first of all, retrieve the GET vars        

  if (isset($_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']))

  {            

     parse_str($_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'], $parameters);        

   }          

// now how about PUT/POST bodies? These override what we got from GET        

  $body = file_get_contents("php://input");        

  $content_type = false;        

  if(isset($_SERVER['CONTENT_TYPE']))

   {            

      $content_type = $_SERVER['CONTENT_TYPE'];        

    }        

  switch($content_type)

   {            

     case "application/json":                

     $body_params = json_decode($body);                

     if($body_params)

      {                    

         foreach($body_params as $param_name => $param_value)

           {                        

              $parameters[$param_name] = $param_value;                    

            }                

       }                

     $this->format = "json";                

     break;            

   case "application/x-www-form-urlencoded":                

   parse_str($body, $postvars);                

   foreach($postvars as $field => $value)

     {                    

        $parameters[$field] = $value;                  

      }                

   $this->format = "html";                

   break;            

   default:               

   // we could parse other supported formats here                

   break;        

  }        //end of switch($content_type)

 $this->parameters = $parameters;

}  // end of public function parseIncomingParams()

} // end of class Request