Awesome

FractalTransformerView plugin for CakePHP

This plugin is a thin wrapper for JsonView that allows using Fractal transformers for your API output. What is Fractal?

Fractal provides a presentation and transformation layer for complex data output, the like found in RESTful APIs, and works really well with JSON. Think of this as a view layer for your JSON/YAML/etc. When building an API it is common for people to just grab stuff from the database and pass it to json_encode(). This might be passable for “trivial” APIs but if they are in use by the public, or used by mobile applications then this will quickly lead to inconsistent output.

Requirements

CakePHP 5.x (use ~1.0 for CakePHP 3.x, ~2.0 for CakePHP 4.x)

Installation

You can install this plugin into your CakePHP application using Composer.

composer require andrej-griniuk/cakephp-fractal-transformer-view

Usage

To enable the plugin set FractalTransformerView.FractalTransformer class name for viewBuilder. Then you just do what you would normally do in your data views - specify which view vars you want to get serialized by setting serialize view builder option. E.g.:

namespace App\Controller;

class ArticlesController extends AppController
{
    public function initialize(): void
    {
        parent::initialize();
        
        $this->loadComponent('RequestHandler');
        
        $this->viewBuilder()->setClassName('FractalTransformerView.FractalTransformer');
    }

    public function index()
    {
        // Set the view vars that have to be serialized.
        $this->set('articles', $this->paginate());
        // Specify which view vars JsonView should serialize.
        $this->viewBuilder()->setOption('serialize', ['articles']);
    }
}

The view will look for transformer class starting with entity name. E.g.:

namespace App\Model\Transformer;

use App\Model\Entity\Article;
use League\Fractal\TransformerAbstract;

class ArticleTransformer extends TransformerAbstract
{
    /**
     * Creates a response item for each instance
     *
     * @param Article $article post entity
     * @return array transformed post
     */
    public function transform(Article $article)
    {
        return [
            'title' => $article->get('title')
        ];
    }
}

If transformer class not found the variable is serialized the normal way.

Custom transformer class name can be set by defining transformer view builder option:

$this->viewBuilder()->setOption('transform', ['articles' => '\App\Model\Transformer\CustomArticleTransformer']);

You can also define if you don't want to use transformer for certain variables:

$this->viewBuilder()->setOption('transform', ['articles' => false]);

You can set a custom serializer (class name or object) via serializer view builder option:

$this->viewBuilder()->setOption('serializer', new CustomSerializer());

Baking Transformers

To bake transformers you must include the plugin in your src/Application.php file. Add the following to your bootstrap method:

$this->addPlugin('FractalTransformerView');

You must also have the cakephp/bake composer package installed.

You can now run bin/cake bake transformer YOUR_MODEL to create transformers.

Bugs & Feedback

https://github.com/andrej-griniuk/cakephp-fractal-transformer-view/issues

Credits

Inspired by @josegonzalez Using Fractal to transform entities for custom api endpoints.