Introduction

RestEasy is a PHP trait for Laravel Controllers, to ensure simpler, more secure REST APIs. The aim is to heavily reduce boilerplate code, whilst enabling fine-grained control over validation, permissions, querying, and much more.

It implements and encourages object-oriented design, and has zero-dependencies (apart from Laravel itself).

It is designed to be non-invasive — simply remove the trait from your controller to return to standard Laravel functionality. There's no need to extend, implement or subclass any code.

Why?

I got tired of rewriting the same boilerplate code every time I started a new Laravel project, or even a new model/controller. It became too much code to maintain, for seemingly repetitive functionality.

Permissions were also a concern — Laravel provides great mechanisms but it requires you to implement them explicitly, which again results in a lot of code to manage.

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Why?
• Table of contents
• Features-at-a-glance
• Installation
• Model discovery
• Validation
• Permissions
• Querying
• Tests
• Contributing
• License

Features at a glance

• Validation
  • All PUT and POST requests are automatically validated
  • unique & exists rules are completed according to request type (PUT or POST) (with id, model, table, etc)
  • Easy custom rules
  • Model rules (validate the model as a whole, not just individual fields)
  • Define immutableFields – fields which can't be modified for PUT requests. These fields will not be validated when updating
  • Payload pruning and merging - only (normalised) fillable fields will be validated.
  • Only aforementioned fillable fields will be passed to the model for update/create.
  • PATCH-like functionality – when updating a model, fields missing from the payload will be filled with existing model data, so as to satisfy validation requirements
• Permissions
  • Simple and implicit model-based validation rules based on eloquent events and the authUser. You don't need to explicity ask for permission — if a permission is violated then the request is aborted. Additionally, if the violation happens during an POST, PUT, or DELETE request then it will be automatically wrapped in a transaction
  • Define permissions for read / write / create / delete / attach / detach
  • Graceful automatic error response
  • Object-oriented definitions — define rules in base classes
  • Enable/disable permissions per-controller, and opt in/out of explicit permissions (if explicit (the default), then the permission method must be defined in the model, and the absence of said method will be interpreted as denial
  • Easy error responses. Optionally define your error class containing your codes. If you return an integer as a permission response, then the response will automatically return a detailed message
  • Easy permission exception logging, with detailed information of the violation
• Querying
  • Define safeRelationships – model relationships which can be queried using the with GET variable (works with all request types except DELETE)
  • Define safeScopes – scopes which can be queried using GET variables for index/list requests
  • Auto-pagination (really). Just define page and page_size GET variables
  • Custom selects
  • Define implicit scopes using the implicitScope method. This will be implied implicitly to all requests.
  • GroupBys
  • Aggregations
  • OrderBys (including by multiple fields)
• Syncing
  • Attach and detach models easily
  • Apply permissions for said syncing
• Response
  • Easily translate error responses
• Error handling

Installation

Use the package manager Composer to install RestEasy.

composer require rotgp/rest-easy

Usage

Just drop the trait into your controller.

use Illuminate\Routing\Controller;

class FooController extends Controller
{
    use RestEasyTrait;
}

Now, associate your route with your controller as you normally would. The standard Laravel resource will automatically map to the standard methods (index, show, update, store, destroy) in the RestEasyTrait.

Route::resource('foos', 'FooController');

Of course, you may define partial resources (or single), implementing only the methods you choose.

Route::resource('foos', 'FooController')->only([
    'index', 'show'
]);

Model discovery

The controller using RestEasy works with the associated model, to ascertain validation rules, permissions, and other optional functionality. The model is a standard vanilla eloquent model, requiring no special traits. A FooController will look for the Foo model in several locations of the app namespace. First in the top-level, then in namespace\Model or namespace\Models.

Alternatively, the controller may implement the modelNamespace method, which returns either the namespace where the model is defined, or the fully qualified namespace of the model itself. The former is a good solution for base controller classes wanting to define a custom location for models.

use Illuminate\Routing\Controller;

class BaseController extends Controller
{
    use RestEasyTrait;
    
    protected function modelNamespace()
    {
        return 'Org\Foo\Bar\Custom\Location\Models';
    }
}

Validation

Laravel Validation is powerful, but it can be painful and tedious. This trait aims to make validation automatic, simple, and flexible. Validation is automatically performed on all update and store (PUT and POST) requests.

Simply define your rules in your model using the validationRules method. This method also includes an optional $authUser parameter, allowing conditional validation based on the auth user making the request.

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Foo extends Model
{
    public function validationRules($authUser)
    {
        return [
            'name' => 'required|unique',
            'title' => 'max:100',
            'bar_id' => 'integer|exists'
        ];
    }
}

Unique and exists validations

Note that, normally, using the unique and exists rules requires special attention according to whether the model is being created or updated, and requires the table name (or model) to be appended, as well as (in the case of updates) the id of the model being updated. This is all taken care of automatically with RestEasy — just define unique or exists with no further parameters. However, if you wish to define these rule definitions manually, RestEasy won't interfere.

Custom validation rules

RestEast also offers easy custom validation rules, as well as model-based rules which take multiple fields (of the model) into account. Simply define a method using the 'validate' + RuleName (studly case) convention, and refer to it using the rule_name (camel case) convention.

For example, the rule below named not_reserved will look for the validateNotReserved method. The rule is considered to fail if anything other than null (ie, an error message) is returned. If an error message is returned, that is what will be returned in the request response.

When using model rules, simply specify the field as 'model'. The corresponding validation method will receive the full payload as it's $value, allowing for more complex validations to be performed.

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Foo extends Model
{
    public function validationRules($authUser)
    {
        return [
            'name' => 'required|unique|not_reserved:foo,bar',
            'title' => 'max:100',
            'description' => 'max:500',
            'bar_id' => 'integer|exists',
            'model' => 'combined_length:name,title,550'
        ];
    }

    public function validateNotReserved($field, $value, $params) {
        if (in_array($value, $params))
          return $field . ' may not contain: ' . implode(',', $params);
    }

    public function validateCombinedLength($field, $value, $params) {
        $val1 = $value[$params[0]];
        $val2 = $value[$params[1]];
        $maxLen = $params[2];
        $combinedLen = strlen($val1) + strlen($val2];
        if ($combinedLen > $maxLen)
          return 'Combined length too long';
    }
}

Other points to mention for custom validation rules

• the $field parameter refers to the field being validated, which may also be 'model' in the case of model rules
• the $value parameter refers to the value being validated, which in the case of model rules will be the full payload. This $value is optional, so if you're expecting an array or an object, then it's safe to access $value->doesNotExist or $value['does_not_exist'] without fear or errors
• when updating a model, any fields missing from the payload will be filled with the model's existing data. In this sense, RestEasy offers PATCH-like functionality when making PUT requests
• similarly, when updating a model, any custom validation methods may make reference to $this, which refers to the model being updated
• the $params parameter refers to the parameters (an array) to be passed from the rule definitions. For example, the validateFoo method for the 'foo:bar,baz' rule definition will receive the $params of ['bar', 'baz']. If no params are passed, then this array will be empty.

Permissions

There are many packages available to handle laravel permissions, but I find most/all of them to be verbose, unintuitive and inflexible. With rest-easy, it's as simple as defining can{verb} methods on the model, and returning a boolean. The $authUser (authenticated user making the current request, if any) will be passed to the method. All permissions are open by default, but it's easy to create object-oriented base classes to define your rules, and customize them as required.

Note that these permissions depend on Eloquent events, and as such, if multiple models are accessed through a join (using Laravel's with helper), then permission will be required for even deeply nested models. If one of the model's pernmission fails, then the entire request will be aborted.

Of course, as these permissions depend on Eloquent events, if your request doesn't interact with the database (or Eloquent models), then you'll need to implement your own logic.

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Foo extends Model
{
    public function canCreate($authUser)
    {
        return true;
    }

    public function canRead($authUser)
    {
        return true;
    }

    public function canUpdate($authUser)
    {
        return true;
    }

    public function canAttach($modelToAttach, $authUser)
    {
        return true;
    }

    public function canDetach($modelToDetach, $authUser)
    {
        return true;
    }
}

Context-specific logic

With the exception of canCreate, remember that the method being called is on the instance of the model being accessed, so code based rules are easy to implement.

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Foo extends Model
{
    public function canRead($authUser)
    {
        return $authUser->id === $this->user->id && !$this->user->blocked;
    }
}

Querying

Once again, Laravel offers ways to query models, but it tends to be verbose. Rest-Easy makes it a breeze.

Safe relationships

Define a method safeRelationships on any model to define which related models may be queried. Return an array of relationships names which correspond to methods which define Laravel's native relationships.

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Foo extends Model
{
    public function safeRelationships($authUser)
    {
        return ['bar', 'bazzes'];
    }

    public function bar()
    {
        return $this->hasOne(Bar::class);
    }

    public function bazzes()
    {
        return $this->hasMany(Baz::class);
    }
}

Once defined, the resource may be queried using the 'with' GET variable. Note that this also works with other verbs (update, post, patch). For example when updating a resource, you may request related entities in the same request.

GET https://myapi.com/foos?with=bar,bazzes

Safe scopes

Laravel already provides a great API to make scoped queries, but it can be verbose and inflexible. Rest-Easy aims to make it concise and flexible. Simple define a safeScopes methods on your model, and return a list of scopes which correspond to standard Laravel scope methods on said model.

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Foo extends Model
{
    public function safeScopes($authUser)
    {
        return ['born_after'];
    }

    public function scopeBornAfter($query, $params)
    {
        return $query->where('date_of_birth', '>', Carbon::parse($params));
    }
}

Once defined, the resource may be queried using any number of scopes. For example, with the above example, the following query may be performed to find foos born after the October 15th 1980:

GET https://myapi.com/foos?born_after=1980-10-15

Auto-pagination

Really. It's another task that should be easy but requires a surprising amount of code. If the client desires paginated results, then simply provide page and page_size GET variables. That's all there is to it.

GET https://myapi.com/foos?page=5&page_size=20

And expect a JSON response like:

[
    'page' : 5,
    'page_size' : 20,
    'total_results': 134,
    'total_pages': 7,
    'data' => [
       /// items
    ]
]

Implicit scopes

Make implicit scopes on any model by defining a scopeImplicit method. This scope will be applied implicitly to all requests for the given model, and is handy for scoping context-based queries, such as the user making the request.

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Foo extends Model
{
    public function scopeImplicit($query)
    {
        $authUserId = optional(auth()->user())->id;
        if ($authUserId === null) 
            return;
        $query->whereHas('bars', function ($query1) use ($authUserId) {
            $query1->where('bar_user.user_id', $authUserId); 
        });
    }

    public function bars()
    {
        return $this->belongsToMany(Bar::class);
    }
}

GET https://myapi.com/foos?with=bars

This will return foos with their associated bars, but only where bars and users exist on a pivot table, and bar_user.user_id matches the id of the user making the (authenticated) request.

Custom selects

Similar in concept to Graphql, simply specify the columns using a select parameter, and only those columns will be returned. Helpful for complex models with many columns.

GET https://myapi.com/foos/1?select=name,age

Order by

Ordering records in Laravel is usually straight-forward, but it gets complicated for multiple fields. Rest-Easy, of course, makes this easy.

Standard

GET https://myapi.com/songs?order_by=album_id

Ascending (default)

GET https://myapi.com/songs?order_by=album_id,asc

Descending

GET https://myapi.com/songs?order_by=album_id,desc

Multiple fields, descending

GET https://myapi.com/songs?order_by=album_id,length_seconds,desc

Aggregation queries

The client can make complex aggregation queries using any of the following verbs, and specifying the column(s) of interest. These requests are heavily sanitized and are not vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. However, please note that permissions won't be checked as individual Eloquent models are never accessed individually.

count, sum, avg, min, max

For example:

GET https://myapi.com/songs?avg=length_seconds

GET https://myapi.com/songs?avg=length_seconds&group_by=album_id

GET https://myapi.com/songs?songs?max=length_seconds

GET https://myapi.com/songs?max=length_seconds&group_by=album_id

GET https://myapi.com/songs?songs?count=id

GET https://myapi.com/songs?count=id&group_by=album_id

GET https://myapi.com/songs?sum=length_seconds

GET https://myapi.com/songs?sum=length_seconds&group_by=album_id

GET https://myapi.com/songs?sum=length_seconds&group_by=album_id&order_by=length_seconds_sum,desc

GET https://myapi.com/songs?songs?sum=length_seconds&group_by=album_id&order_by=length_seconds_sum,desc&longer_than=200

GET https://myapi.com/songs?sum=id&min=length_seconds&max=length_seconds&avg=length_seconds&count=album_id

Tests

Run vendor/bin/phpunit to run the tests.

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

Please make sure to update tests appropriately.

License

MIT