Controllers for Resources, Services and Web Pages in a Symfony Application

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The controller processes the request and returns a response. Actions for resource controllers, services, and web pages make up the way you interact with application.

Resource

A resource is an entity that stores data. For example, news, product, order, article, comment. Also, the resource is a list of all units of this entity.

Main actions on the resource:

  • Creation (adding to the list)
  • Receiving
  • Editing
  • Removal

Resource API example:

GET /api/catalog/products/30004 # getting the resource "Product" by identifier "30004"
POST /api/blog/articles         # creating an "Article" resource with data in the body of the POST request
DELETE /api/blog/comments/1250  # delete resource "Comment" with id "1250"

The segments catalog and blog in the URLs mean that the resources belong to a specific domain and can be separated into the appropriate bundles. For example, the domain-specific resources of a catalog can be Product, Category, Review, and for a blog, the domain-specific resources are Article, Comment, Author.

Service

A service is a feature provided by an application. For example, authorization, text translation or search.

Main actions on the service:

  • Performs useful work and returns a response

Services API example:

POST service/security/authorization
POST service/translation/translate
POST service/mass-media/search

Segments in the URL account, translation, mass-media mean belonging to a specific domain or bundle.

Services differ from resources in that they do not have an entity to store data, they only do some work and return a result. For example, authorization, search, text translation.

Web Page

A web page is an HTML representation of resource data and service functions. For example, the main web page may contain the following resources: a menu, a site description, popular products, a list of articles, and the following service functions: authorization and search.

Web pages can display:

  • Composition of resources and services (main web page)
  • Data of a specific resource (web page of a specific product, article, order)
  • List of resource units (list of products, articles, orders)
  • Service (authorization web page, search function)

Main actions on a web page:

  • Receiving
  • Submitting a form with data

Web Pages API Example:

GET /mass-media/news
GET /purchases/orders/2337
GET /account/registration

The segments in the URL mass-media and account mean belonging to a specific domain or bundle.

Controller directory structure:

/Controller
  /Api
    /Purchases
      ApiOrderController.php
  /Service
    /Security
      ServiceAuthorizationController.php
  /WebPage
    /Purchases
      OrderController.php
    /Account
      RegistrationController.php

Summary

The method of dividing controllers by types - resource, service and web page was considered, the main actions were described, API examples and the structure of the project directory were given.