Heads up! To view this whole video, sign in with your Courses account or enroll in your free 7-day trial. Sign In Enroll

Build a REST API with PHP

Well done!

You have completed Build a REST API with PHP!

Sign up for Treehouse Back to Library
Preview
Video Player
00:00
00:00
00:00
  1. 2x 2x
  2. 1.75x 1.75x
  3. 1.5x 1.5x
  4. 1.25x 1.25x
  5. 1.1x 1.1x
  6. 1x 1x
  7. 0.75x 0.75x
  8. 0.5x 0.5x
Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.

Better Errors

4:20 with Alena Holligan

One of the most commonly overlooked parts of designing an API is proper error messaging. We all get excited to get our API out the door for its amazing functionality, and we forget to take care of informing callers of our API about errors that they might encounter. Because clients don’t have access to our error logs, we need to give them appropriate error messages.

One of the most commenly overlooked parts of designing an API 0:00
is proper error messaging. 0:05
We all get excited to get our API out the door for its amazing functionality. 0:07
And we forget to take care of informing callers of our API 0:12
about errors that they might encounter. 0:16
Because clients don't have access to our error logs, 0:18
we need to give them appropriate error messages. 0:22
Let's see what we can do about better communicating when things don't go right. 0:26
We're going to start by setting up a custom exception for our API. 0:32
Add a new folder under source named Exception. 0:36
Then create a new file named APIException.php. 0:44
First, we need to add our namespace. 0:54
This will be App\Exception. 0:59
Then we can add our class. 1:04
ApiException extends the default Exception. 1:06
We're going to keep this class pretty close to the original, 1:18
so we'll start with our constructor, public function __construct. 1:24
Our message, Will have a default of an empty string. 1:31
Our code will default to 400 and 1:38
our Exception previous or null. 1:44
Then we're gonna call the parent __construct. 1:51
Pass the message, the code and previous. 1:57
Besides that, we're going to add some constants for writing our messages. 2:03
We'll be able to access these outside the class, just like we do for 2:08
the PDO constants. 2:12
This will help our verbage stay consistent. 2:14
I don't wanna worry about typing all these out. 2:16
So I've included them in the teacher's notes. 2:18
You can copy and paste from there. 2:21
This is just an extra exception, 2:24
it's not gonna actually change how Slim handles the exceptions. 2:26
So we wanna set up a custom handler as well, so 2:30
we can return a JSON error response. 2:33
So in our dependencies, We're going to add another container. 2:37
Container, and this needs to be called errorHandler. 2:46
And let's close our semi colon. 2:59
Then we're going to return and set a new function. 3:02
We'll need the request, the response, 3:07
and the exception, and we'll want to use. 3:11
We'll set data equal to an array. 3:19
Let's close some semi colons. 3:24
Our status is going to equal error. 3:29
Our code is going to equal the exception getCode and 3:36
the message, Is going to equal the exception, getMessage. 3:42
Now, we can return a response withJson and 3:53
say data and the exception, getCode. 3:58
Let's check this out with Postman just to make sure that we didn't break anything. 4:05
We're gonna look for all our courses. 4:10
Great, it still works. 4:13
Now, we're ready to look at our methods and throw some exceptions. 4:15