#ArrestDB

ArrestDB is a "plug-n-play" RESTful API for SQLite, MySQL and PostgreSQL databases.

ArrestDB provides a REST API that maps directly to your database stucture with no configuation.

Lets suppose you have set up ArrestDB at http://api.example.com/ and that your database has a table named customers. To get a list of all the customers in the table you would simply need to do:

GET http://api.example.com/customers/

As a response, you would get a JSON formatted list of customers.

Or, if you only want to get one customer, then you would append the customer id to the URL:

GET http://api.example.com/customers/123/

##Requirements

• PHP 5.4+ & PDO
• SQLite / MySQL / PostgreSQL

##Installation

Edit index.php and change the $dsn variable located at the top, here are some examples:

• SQLite: $dsn = 'sqlite://./path/to/database.sqlite';
• MySQL: $dsn = 'mysql://[user[:pass]@]host[:port]/db/;
• PostgreSQL: $dsn = 'pgsql://[user[:pass]@]host[:port]/db/;

If you want to restrict access to allow only specific IP addresses, add them to the $clients array:

$clients = array
(
	'127.0.0.1',
	'127.0.0.2',
	'127.0.0.3',
);

After you're done editing the file, place it in a public directory (feel free to change the filename).

If you're using Apache, you can use the following mod_rewrite rules in a .htaccess file:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
	RewriteEngine	On
	RewriteCond		%{REQUEST_FILENAME}	!-d
	RewriteCond		%{REQUEST_FILENAME}	!-f
	RewriteRule		^(.*)$ index.php/$1	[L,QSA]
</IfModule>

Nota bene: You must access the file directly, including it from another file won't work.

##API Design

The actual API design is very straightforward and follows the design patterns of the majority of APIs.

(C)reate > POST   /table
(R)ead   > GET    /table[/id]
(R)ead   > GET    /table[/column/content]
(U)pdate > PUT    /table/id
(D)elete > DELETE /table/id

To put this into practice below are some example of how you would use the ArrestDB API:

# Get all rows from the "customers" table
GET http://api.example.com/customers/

# Get a single row from the "customers" table (where "123" is the ID)
GET http://api.example.com/customers/123/

# Get all rows from the "customers" table where the "country" field matches "Australia" (`LIKE`)
GET http://api.example.com/customers/country/Australia/

# Get 50 rows from the "customers" table
GET http://api.example.com/customers/?limit=50

# Get 50 rows from the "customers" table ordered by the "date" field
GET http://api.example.com/customers/?limit=50&by=date&order=desc

# Create a new row in the "customers" table where the POST data corresponds to the database fields
POST http://api.example.com/customers/

# Update customer "123" in the "customers" table where the PUT data corresponds to the database fields
PUT http://api.example.com/customers/123/

# Delete customer "123" from the "customers" table
DELETE http://api.example.com/customers/123/

Please note that GET calls accept the following query string variables:

• by (column to order by)
  • order (order direction: ASC or DESC)
• limit (LIMIT x SQL clause)
  • offset (OFFSET x SQL clause)

Additionally, POST and PUT requests accept JSON-encoded and/or zlib-compressed payloads.

POST and PUT requests are only able to parse data encoded in application/x-www-form-urlencoded. Support for multipart/form-data payloads will be added in the future.

If your client does not support certain methods, you can use the X-HTTP-Method-Override header:

• PUT = POST + X-HTTP-Method-Override: PUT
• DELETE = GET + X-HTTP-Method-Override: DELETE

Alternatively, you can also override the HTTP method by using the _method query string parameter.

Since 1.5.0, it's also possible to atomically INSERT a batch of records by POSTing an array of arrays.

##Responses

All responses are in the JSON format. A GET response from the customers table might look like this:

[
    {
        "id": "114",
        "customerName": "Australian Collectors, Co.",
        "contactLastName": "Ferguson",
        "contactFirstName": "Peter",
        "phone": "123456",
        "addressLine1": "636 St Kilda Road",
        "addressLine2": "Level 3",
        "city": "Melbourne",
        "state": "Victoria",
        "postalCode": "3004",
        "country": "Australia",
        "salesRepEmployeeNumber": "1611",
        "creditLimit": "117300"
    },
    ...
]

Successful POST responses will look like:

{
    "success": {
        "code": 201,
        "status": "Created"
    }
}

Successful PUT and DELETE responses will look like:

{
    "success": {
        "code": 200,
        "status": "OK"
    }
}

Errors are expressed in the format:

{
    "error": {
        "code": 400,
        "status": "Bad Request"
    }
}

The following codes and message are avaiable:

• 200 OK
• 201 Created
• 204 No Content
• 400 Bad Request
• 403 Forbidden
• 404 Not Found
• 409 Conflict
• 503 Service Unavailable

Also, if the callback query string is set and is valid, the returned result will be a JSON-P response:

callback(JSON);

Ajax-like requests will be minified, whereas normal browser requests will be human-readable.

##Changelog

• 1.2.0 support for JSON payloads in POST and PUT (optionally gzipped)
• 1.3.0 support for JSON-P responses
• 1.4.0 support for HTTP method overrides using the X-HTTP-Method-Override header
• 1.5.0 support for bulk inserts in POST
• 1.6.0 added support for PostgreSQL
• 1.7.0 fixed PostgreSQL connection bug, other minor improvements
• 1.8.0 fixed POST / PUT bug introduced in 1.5.0
• 1.9.0 updated to PHP 5.4 short array syntax

##Credits

ArrestDB is a complete rewrite of Arrest-MySQL with several optimizations and additional features.

##License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2014 Alix Axel (alix.axel+github@gmail.com).