devot:eeDevoted to ExpressionEngine

Integrate RESTful API’s into your ExpressionEngine 2.0 website with this Rest module. You can list Tweets, search for Digg articles, show off Flickr photographs, search YouTube for videos and interact with any open RESTful API.

Installation

Move the “rest/” folder inside “system/expressionengine/third_party/”.

Usage

You can create REST requests in the backend module and reference them with Template Syntax, then loop through the returned response. Everything sent back from the API is converted into a loopable ExpressionEngine array wether its XML, JSON, Serialized data, pure PHP, CSV, RSS and Atom feeds. It will even include XML attributes as well as node values so no data is lost.

<ul>
{exp:rest name="foo"}
<li>{some_value}</li>
{/exp:rest}
</ul>

Rest module can do more than just grab information from predefined requests. You can create REST requests on the fly:

{exp:rest url="http://example.com/" verb="get" format="json" param:foo="bar" }
{some_value}<br/>
{/exp:rest}

Parameters

• name - Name of the saved request

• id - ID of the saved request

• record_type - Single or Multiple records?

  • Default: “m”
  • Options: “s” or “m”

• base - By default you will loop through the top level of the data. Use this to loop through nested arrays.

  • Default: empty
  • Example: data,links

• limit - Number of results to loop through inside the base element.

  • Default: all
    

• offset - Where to start looping

  • Default: all

• format - What format should the content be encoded in? This sets the Accept HTTP header

  • Default: “xml”
  • Options: “xml”, “atom”, “rss”, “json”, “serialized” or “csv”

• verb - Also alias “method”, picks which HTTP method to use.

  • Default: “get”
  • Options: “get”, “post”, “put” or “delete”

Parameters can be added even if you call a saved request, it will merge or override params saved in the CP.

Debugging

To debug a request you can add debug=“yes” to the tag.

You could use this syntax with other Template Tags and create some very dynamic flexible sites.

Pagination

{exp:rest url="[some url]" format="xml" limit="16" offset="{global:pagination_offset}" paginate="bottom" base="feed,documents,document"}

    <p class="largey"><a href="{url}" title="{title}">{title}</a><span class="large right">{createDate_mon}/{createDate_day}/{createDate_year}</span></p>

    {paginate}
       <ul class="pagination margin_bottom_04">      
        {previous_page}
            <li><a href="{pagination_url}" title="Previous" class="arrow-prev pager-element">Previous</a></li>
        {/previous_page}

        {page}
            <li><a href="{pagination_url}"class="current">{pagination_page_number}</a></li>
        {/page}

        {next_page}
            <li><a href="{pagination_url}" title="Next" class="arrow-next pager-element">Next</a></li>
        {/next_page}
        </ul>
    {/paginate}

{/exp:rest} 

Changelog

1.6.0

• Added pagination
• Added basic documentation in the form of a README

1.5.3

• CSV fields wrapped with single quotes or no quotes will now work, not just those with double quotes.
• Supports v2.1.3 changing lang.rest.php to rest_lang.php.

1.5.2

• Fixed an issue with XML/RSS stripping CDATA.

1.5.1

• Avoid strtotime on unix timestamps.
• Hide errors if an invalid base is set, just returns an empty result.
• Updated Curl library for improved compatibility.

1.5.0

• Added base=”” tag so you can skip down a few levels. base=“comments,data” is useful for Facebook Graph.
• Use format=”” to any tag that should be a human readable date, no matter the format that comes from the API.

1.4.0

• Global Variables can now be passed to parameters. E.g: param:foo=”{bar}”
• Added limit=”” and offset=”” parameters to help with restricting results.
• Improved EngineHosting support, i.e no more basedir error messages.

1.3.0

• Now supports RSS and Atom feeds.
• Extra params can be added in the template tag to saved requests.
• Added debug=“yes”.
• Users running in safe mode (WHY?!) will no longer get PHP errors.