Vocabulary support in versions 1 and 2 of the tool was limited. Only Schema.org was 100% supported. Version 3 is now compatible with most existing vocabularies. To do so, we have implemented support for the Web Ontology Language (OWL) and for XML Schema types.
Also, the generated code now leverages the new features introduced in recent PHP versions, especially the improvements made to the type system: typed properties, nullable type declarations…
This moment in time might call for this dynamic, but over the long term it will be destructive to the noble purpose and ideals of the open internet. A company making a business decision to moderate itself is different from a government removing access, yet can feel much the same.
Among the various RDF vocabularies, one could be the foundation for this redecentralized web: ActivityStreams. It’s the vocabulary of ActivityPub, a W3C-backed social networking protocol used to build decentralized and federated social media. ActivityPub is already implemented by popular social media software including Mastodon, PeerTube, Mobilizon and WriteFreely. Servers implementing the ActivityPub protocol are interoperable and federated in what we call the Fediverse.
And here we’re back to API Platform Schema Generator v3: this new version has been created especially to bootstrap PHP applications using ActivityStreams! Generating a set of PHP classes implementing the vocabulary is as easy as cherry-picking the types and properties you want in a config file!
And that’s not all. I also created a new experimental component implementing the whole ActivityPub protocol: API Platform ActivityPub!
Thanks to this component, connecting a Symfony or an API Platform application (including existing ones) to the Fediverse is just a matter of installing a bundle! As all other API Platform components, API Platform ActivityPub can also be used as a standalone PHP library in projects not using Symfony.
PHP was the language of choice to build the original (at that time decentralized) web. Over the years, PHP dramatically improved, removingmostfootguns and becoming one of the fastest programming languages. But PHP is still easy to learn, and usable by hobbyists. I hope that it will become the language of choice to build the redecentralized web, and that API Platform will help to achieve this goal!
To allow me to work more on API Platform, my other free software projects and my experiments to redecentralize the web, consider sponsoring me! (Yes I know, GitHub is a proprietary service and belongs to a Big Tech, but we all have our contradictions, and I hope to be able to switch to radicle at some point.)
Version 2.6 is the result of more than one year of work and hundreds of commits. It contains a huge list of new features, checkout the change logs (core library, distribution) for the full list. In this blog post, I’ll present the major new features! You can also take a look at the slide deck I presented (go on SpeakerDeck for the transcript):
PHP 8 was released one week ago, and it comes with a huge list of new features. Among these features, attributes are a game changer for API Platform, as it relied a lot on annotations.
Starting with API Platform 2.6 you can use every annotation classes as PHP 8 attributes:
<?php
namespace App\Entity;
use ApiPlatform\Core\Annotation\ApiResource;
#[ApiResource]
class Book
{
public function __construct(
public string $id,
public string $title
) {}
}
API Platform is now also fully compatible with PHP 8 (all deprecations have been fixed), and PHP 8 is now the default in the API Platform Distribution!
Next.js and Nuxt.js Support
API Platform comes with a very practical tool to scaffold client applications: the client generator. This generator uses the Hydra or OpenAPI (experimental) documentation of the API to generate apps using various client-side technologies. It works with any API documented using these formats, not only with APIs using the server-side component of API Platform!
Next.js is the reference framework in the React ecosystem. It is very easy to use, supports Server-Side Rendering out of the box, has a simple yet powerful page-based routing system and supports a wide range of features.
We also updated the API Platform distribution to use Next.js by default. A Docker container and a Docker Compose definition will start a skeleton of a Next.js app automatically and you will be able to scaffold your pages and forms by running a single command!
API Platform Admin is now also integrated in this Next.js app, on the /admin route.
You prefer using Vue instead of React? We’ve got you covered! In API Platform 2.6 we also introduced a Nuxt.js generator. Nuxt.js is similar to Next.js, but using Vue! And, as API Platform, it has been created by French folks!
Simplifying the API Platform Distribution with Caddy Server
In API Platform 2.6, the distribution has been totally revamped. API Platform supports many advanced features out of the box, including the Mercure and Vulcain protocols. To support these features, API Platform came with many Docker containers:
As explained in the previous section, we also replaced Create React App by Next.js and merged the containers for the client and the admin.
The result is a very simplified setup:
PHP FPM
Caddy web server
Postgres (optional)
Next.js container (optional)
We also added support for a production mode to the Docker Compose definition included in the distribution.
Better Configuration
Until now, it wasn’t possible to define global configuration defaults applied to all resources and all operations. You had to copy your configuration in all resource definitions. Starting with API Platform 2.6, you can define a global default configuration:
With the previous config, write routes are disabled for the whole API, and Mercure support (async API) is enabled for all resources!
Access Control for Properties
API Platform supports resource-based access control. In 2.6, we introduced support for property-based access control:
<?php
namespace App\Entity;
use ApiPlatform\Core\Annotation\ApiResource;
use ApiPlatform\Core\Annotation\ApiProperty;
#[ApiResource]
class Book
{
#[ApiProperty(security: "is_granted('ROLE_ADMIN')"]
public $adminOnlyProperty;
}
Thanks to this rule, the adminOnlyProperty will be serialized only for users having the admin role! Other users will not be able to see it.
ActivityPub is a specification edited by the W3C unlocking interoperability between social networking applications. It’s part of the solution to fight global censorship and to move out of the walled gardens of big tech companies. ActivityPub is already implemented by many software including Mastodon (Twitter-like), PeerTube (YouTube-like), PixelFed (Instagram-like), Mobilizon (Meetup-like)… This ecosystem is called the Fediverse.
The biggest strength of API Platform is its community of users and contributors! To celebrate our vibrant community, we added new pages to the website dedicated to the community. Each contributor now has a dedicated page including a summary of their contributions. Discover our awesome community!
And to thank contributors, we’re also offering nice t-shirts to them as part of the Hacktoberfest initiative!
The next version of API Platform will be API Platform 3! We’ll release API Platform 2.7 at the same time. API Platform 3 will basically be API Platform 2.7 minus the backward compatibility layer with the deprecated code.
API Platform 3 will promote subresources as first-class citizens! They will support write operations. The overall configuration is also being revamped.
Also, to reduce the maintenance burden, API Platform 3 will only support PHP 8 and Symfony 5.2+! Be prepared.
Misc
They are also loads of new features in API Platform 2.6 not listed in this blog post: our GraphQL subsystem gained a lot of new features (including support for subscriptions and page-based pagination), the MongoDB bridge now supports the Mercure protocol, the OpenAPI builder has been totally rewritten, composed identifiers are easier to handle… Read the change logs (core library, distribution) to discover all of them!
I want to thank all contributors having contributed code and documentation for API Platform 2.6! Nothing would be possible without you.
