Nofuzz Blog Tutorial

This is a tutorial will show how to make a Blog system REST API using the Nofuzz framework.

The result of this tutorial is a number of endpoints, complete with authentication and reading & writing to the database.

The Tutorial covers the creation of API endpoints for:

• Registering accounts
• Authenticating User
• List, Create, Edit, Delete of Blogs
• List, Create, Edit, Delete of Blog-Articles (posts)
• List, Create, Edit, Delete of Blog-Article-Comments

The API will NOT cover the following:

• A user interface (web page) for the Blog

Install

Download the repository to a new directory, and configure your web server to point to the /public folder.

After installing the files, you need to run composers update to download all dependencies.

$ composer update -o --no-dev

Configure

Change the values in app/Config/config.json to mach your setup. Specifically the Database Host and Username & Password must be changed to match your config.

Things to know before you start

Authentication and Authorization

Only the Registeration and SignIn endpoints have no authentication checks. The other API endpoints will use a JWT token (See jwt.io) to authenticate the requests.

A JWT Token is obtained by calling the SignIn endpoint with correct credentials. Once obtained a client needs to pass the token to all other endpints via the Authorization: Bearer <token> header.

Models

The JSON models of all the tables are docuemnted in the Models.md

Tutorial

Design the application - Steps The following steps were taken when designing this tutorial application:

1. The API
2. The Database
3. Controllers
4. Middleware
5. Routes definitions

1 - The API

Here we're going to define the API endpoints that will make up the whole API. The API endpoints are grouped into logical groups as per below:

Register

POST    /blog/api/v1/register           Register a new Account

Auth

POST    /blog/api/v1/signin             Sign In (obtain session/token)
DELETE  /blog/api/v1/signout            Sign Out (remove session/token)

Accounts

GET     /blog/api/v1/accounts[/{uuid}]  Get account(s) 
POST    /blog/api/v1/accounts           Create an account
PUT     /blog/api/v1/accounts           Update an account
DELETE  /blog/api/v1/accounts           Remove an account

Blogs

GET     /blog/api/v1/blogs[/{uuid}]     Get blog(s)
POST    /blog/api/v1/blogs              Create a blog
PUT     /blog/api/v1/blogs              Update a blog
DELETE  /blog/api/v1/blogs              Remove a blog

Articles

GET     /blog/api/v1/articles[/{uuid}]  Get article(s)
POST    /blog/api/v1/articles           Create an article
PUT     /blog/api/v1/articles           Update an article
DELETE  /blog/api/v1/articles           Remove an article

Comments

GET     /blog/api/v1/comments[/{uuid}]  Get comment(s)
POST    /blog/api/v1/comments           Create a comment
PUT     /blog/api/v1/comments           Update a comment
DELETE  /blog/api/v1/comments           Remove a comment

2 - The Database

Please see MySql Schema for the complete Schema DDL. Use your favorite tool to create the database.

This app uses a MySQL Database by default, but is easily converted to using Firebird, PostgreSql, Oracle or any other DB.

4 - Controllers

In the /app/Controllers/v1 folder you will find all the Controller classes for each endpoint group. These controllers are:

• RegisterController.php
• SignInController.php
• SignOutController.php
• BlogAccountController.php
• BlogBlogController.php
• BlogArticleController.php
• BlogCommentController.php

5 - Middleware

In the /app/Middleware folder you will find all the Middleware classes.

There are four types of Middleware:

• Common Before request handling
• Common After request handling
• Group specific Before request handling
• Group specific After request handling

Common Before Middleware

The Middleware that is commonly run before any request processing:

• CorsBeforeMiddleware.php
• RequestIdBeforeMiddleware.php

Common After Middleware

The Middleware that run After each request are:

• RequestIdAfterMiddleware.php
• ResponseTimeAfterMiddleware.php
• ResponseLogAfterMiddleware.php

Group specific Before Middleware

The Middleware for the Authenticated endpoints are:

• AuthBeforeMiddleware.php

Group specific After Middleware

No After Middleware defined.

6 - Routes definitions

The routes.json file contains all the mappings between the Endpoints and the Controllers. We specify each endpoint, and the Controller that will handle it.

The routes are divided into two groups, Anonymous and Authenticated. For each group we specify different Middleware.