Laravel and Fractal

I am very interested in Fractal because I have an API that is getting out of control. I am using the Transformers @JeffreyWay taught in the Incremental API series and though I have researched for the last 2 days, I am still clueless as how to switch to Fractal.

I am interested in using larasponse but am not good enough to do so with the instructions on the readme page. Can you point me to a resource or resources to make this tranformation (I guess your "the implementation is not so hard" comment wasn't meant for me).

Hi @jgravois thanks for the comment.

You can read more about transformers here - http://fractal.thephpleague.com/transformers/ scroll down for "Classes for Transformers". Also, scroll more and see how to nest and transform related objects.

I'll try to update a library with more examples, but it's crucial for you to know how Fractal works.

Hello, again @salebab

I was wondering if you have a "barebones" project with your Fractal package installed and in use that I could tear to pieces and then experiment with to learn. I am having great troubles setting this up.

I am also having problems using Fractal. I want to create a service provider for fractal, but I don't know how

@mabasic there is already created service provider for laravel https://github.com/gathercontent/laravel-fractal

Yeah, but I am having problems implementing in Incremental API series.

You do not need to create a service provider, you can use larasponse or mentioned laravel-fractal. Only you need is to register a service provider in your app.php.

Btw, laravel-fractal lib seems more complete, there is a facade, and probably more options, but personally, I don't like the architecture.

On the other hand, with larasponse you will write less and more readable code, especially when you need to output paginated collection. Also, there is a default transformer that can output object as it is, include key is configurable on runtime, etc.

If you have a trouble to setup, please be more specific, it should be really straightforward, I've used on few projects and it works like a charm.

@salebab larasponse looks like a great package. I will give it a go on monday.

@salebab I could not resist, I had to try it and it works. But how do you use serializers with this package?

I have this:

$manager = new Manager();
$manager->setSerializer(new DataArraySerializer());
$resource = new Collection($arrangements, new ArrangementTransformer());
return $manager->createData($resource)->toArray();

Is there a way I can optimize this.

Also if I use the code above I have no use for your package because this line

return $this->fractal->collection($arrangements, new ArrangementTransformer());

is of not much use to me if I want to wrap item and collection in data.

---

Also I am getting output for collection:

{
    "data": [
        {
            "active": false,
            "featured": false,
            "order": 1,
            "slug": "1412085610-quibusdam"
        },
        {
            "active": false,
            "featured": true,
            "order": 2,
            "slug": "1412085611-non"
        }
    ]
}

And for single item:

{
    "data": {
        "active": false,
        "featured": false,
        "order": 1,
        "slug": "1412085610-quibusdam"
    }
}

But in Fractal documentation this is the correct output:

// Item
[
    'data' => [
        'foo' => 'bar'
    ],
];

// Collection
[
    'data' => [
        [
            'foo' => 'bar'
        ]
    ],
];

Why is there a difference in brackets?

Can you please post a full example on how you do that.

@mabasic I choose to use ArraySerializer, but if you want to use other, just bind it:

App::bind('League\Fractal\Serializer\SerializerAbstract', 'League\Fractal\Serializer\DataArraySerializer');

So, you will define a serializer and then it will be used globally for all responses.

For the second example, your application outputs JSON object, but Fractal itself returns php array. You can dd($this->fractal->collection($arrangements, new ArrangementTransformer())); in your controller and you will see array.

@salebab I will try the code above soon and post back soon. It looks very promising.

Perfect, it works like a charm. Thank you for your explanation and guidance.

I have created a service provider for DataArraySerializer:

<?php namespace Acme\Providers;

use Illuminate\Support\ServiceProvider;

class FractalSerializerServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider {

    /**
     * Register the application services.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function register()
    {
        /**
         * See: http://fractal.thephpleague.com/serializers/
         */
        $this->app->bind(
            'League\Fractal\Serializer\SerializerAbstract',
            'League\Fractal\Serializer\DataArraySerializer'
        );
    }

}

And now in my controller I have:

protected $fractal;

    public function __construct(Larasponse $fractal)
    {
        $this->fractal = $fractal;
    }

 public function index()
 {
        $arrangements = Arrangement::all();

        return $this->fractal->collection($arrangements, new ArrangementTransformer());
 }

Nice and clean. Thank you very much.

@salebab Hi, I have written a post on how to use this package. I hope that you will like it: http://mariobasic.com/laravel-fractal/

@mabasic like it! I'll put a link in readme file :)

Hi all, I've just updated library to work with Laravel 5, the code is on brench L5. https://github.com/salebab/larasponse/tree/L5

Any suggestions are welcome :)

@salebab and @mabasic can you kindly help on using The Fractal parseIncludes() ?????

Hello! I stumbled across larasponse today and it looks beautiful. I'm hoping to include it in a laravel 5 api I'm working on, but it looks like it has been updated in 6 months. I'm nervous about including it in my project as it says that the laravel 5 version is still in development and it looks like it hasn't been touched in awhile. Any news on whether it will continue to be supported or if a stable branch will be released for laravel 5?

No idea about the update but you can use Fractal itself, which is not connected to any framework. The API of the package is almost the same.

Hey, my question is: how does all this relate to JMS\Serializer (https://github.com/schmittjoh/serializer)? Why would I use this instead of that?

@pwm Which one? Larasponse? It's a Fractal wrapper for Laravel specifically.

If you mean Fractal, well check the docs and compare the features between the 2 libraries.

Yes, sorry, I meant Fractal. I just stumbled upon it today, and don't quite understand what problems are they solving.

I have used JMS\Serializer for a large Laravel (4.2) project with Doctrine. With Doctrine+JMS, type annotations on exposed entity attributes are read automatically. In my opinion this elegantly solves the Resource+Transformer part of Fractal, while JMS offers json, xml and yaml serialization.

Edit: Just reread my comment, apologies if it came through as negative. I was just wondering if I'd missed something re Fractal.

@mabasic Page you gave http://mariobasic.com/laravel-fractal/ now shows 404 :(

@ghst just replace mariobasic.com with laravelista.com like so: http://laravelista.com/laravel-fractal/

I am working on a new post for fractal and laravel. It will be ready in a few days.

We wrote a Fractal module for Lumen because the existing libraries didn't support includes through middleware.

https://github.com/nordsoftware/lumen-fractal

I've written an easy to use package to integrate Fractal into Laravel/Lumen: https://github.com/spatie/laravel-fractal

I've also made a package integrating Fractal into Laravel. A slightly different and more abstract approach, but might be of interest to some :) https://github.com/flugger/laravel-responder

@freekmurze does your package support pagination?

@madlouis our package does at least support pagination.

https://github.com/nordsoftware/lumen-fractal

@madlouis yup, https://github.com/spatie/fractalistic#using-pagination