Using Grocery Restable without a framework

Grocery Restable’s core has no framework dependency. A single front controller serves both the REST API and the admin GUI, with native PHP sessions and its own database connection (PDO or MySQLi).

Installation

composer require kctofficial/grocery-restable

Copy vendor/kctofficial/grocery-restable/config/grocery-restable.php into your project and adjust it:

return [
    'framework' => 'standalone',
    'storagePath' => __DIR__ . '/../writable/grocery-restable',   // OUTSIDE the web root
    'apiUrl' => '/api',
    'adminUrl' => '/grocery-restable',
    'debug' => false,
    'encryptionKey' => getenv('GROCERY_RESTABLE_KEY') ?: '',
    'setupToken' => getenv('GROCERY_RESTABLE_SETUP_TOKEN') ?: '',
];

Front controller

public/index.php

<?php
require __DIR__ . '/../vendor/autoload.php';

use GroceryRestable\GroceryRestable;
use GroceryRestable\Http\NativeServer;

$api = GroceryRestable::create(require __DIR__ . '/../config/grocery-restable.php');

// Optional: resources in code (take precedence over the GUI)
$api->resource('employees')
    ->setRelation('officeCode', 'offices', 'city')
    ->requiredFields('lastName');

if (! NativeServer::serve($api)) {
    http_response_code(404);   // not an /api or /grocery-restable URL: your own routing goes here
}

NativeServer::serve() dispatches requests whose path starts with the path of apiUrl or adminUrl and returns false for everything else, so it can live next to an existing application.

Route every request to the front controller. Apache:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^ index.php [QSA,L]
# Pass the Authorization header to PHP (CGI/FastCGI)
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]

nginx:

location / {
    try_files $uri /index.php$is_args$args;
}

Try it immediately with the bundled example:

8080/grocery-restable

php -S 127.0.0.1:8080 examples/standalone/index.php

Setup

Open /grocery-restable: the wizard proposes No framework (native PHP) (CodeIgniter 4 is only selectable when the library runs inside a CodeIgniter application). Step 2 asks for the database engine and the PHP driver, e.g. MySQL / MariaDB + MySQLi or PostgreSQL + PDO. See Database connections.

Lower level usage

When you have your own router, build a GroceryRestable\Http\Request and emit the Response yourself:

use GroceryRestable\Http\NativeServer;

// in your /api/{path} route
$request = NativeServer::requestFromGlobals($path, 'https://example.com/api');
$api->handle($request)->send();

// in your /grocery-restable/{path} route
$api->handleAdmin(NativeServer::requestFromGlobals($path, 'https://example.com/grocery-restable'))->send();

Or construct the request explicitly (useful for PSR-7 bridges, tests, queues):

use GroceryRestable\Http\Request;

$response = $api->handle(new Request(
    method: 'GET',
    path: 'employees',
    queryString: 'select=lastName&limit=5',
    headers: ['apikey' => $key],
    baseUrl: 'https://example.com/api',
));

$response->getStatus();       // 200
$response->getHeaders();      // ['Content-Type' => 'application/json; charset=utf-8', 'Content-Range' => '0-4/*', ...]
$response->decodedJson();     // array of rows

Serving a single resource Grocery CRUD style (path relative to the resource):

$employees = (new \GroceryRestable\Resource\Resource('employees'))->setRelation('officeCode', 'offices', 'city');
$api->render($employees, NativeServer::requestFromGlobals($pathAfterResource, 'https://example.com/staff'))->send();

Validation and sessions

• setRules() uses the built-in validator, which implements the common CodeIgniter rules (Validation). Replace it with $api->setValidator(new MyValidator()).
• The admin GUI uses PHP native sessions (cookie grocery_restable_admin, HttpOnly, SameSite=Lax, Secure on HTTPS). Pass your own SessionInterface implementation to handleAdmin() to integrate another session store.