[0:00] Hey everyone, welcome to the first
[0:02] episode of my Laravel API course for
[0:04] beginners. In this video series, I'm
[0:06] going to be covering all the basic
[0:08] information you need to know to start
[0:09] building your own APIs inside Lavel. So
[0:13] in this course, I'm assuming you guys
[0:14] have the basics of Ludal down and now
[0:17] you're trying to learn how to build your
[0:19] own APIs. Okay, so let's get right into
[0:21] it. So first thing first, you don't
[0:23] actually need to create a new project to
[0:25] start adding APIs. So if you already
[0:27] have an existing project, you can follow
[0:29] along. But if you don't, the first step
[0:31] is for us to create a new project or a
[0:33] new Laravel project. So I already have
[0:35] the command here. So I'm going to go
[0:36] ahead and run Laravel new. And this is
[0:38] my project's name. You can name yours
[0:40] whatever you like. Hit enter.
[0:43] Now we don't necessarily need any
[0:45] starter kits to add APIs, but just to
[0:48] make things a bit easier, I'm going to
[0:49] go ahead and select lot of a breeze. So,
[0:51] we have some basic boiler plate, you
[0:53] know, for logging, log out, uh, things
[0:55] of that nature. If you're not familiar
[0:57] with starter kits, you can skip this
[0:59] part or just follow along as I'm doing.
[1:02] And next up, for this one, I'm just
[1:03] going to go blade with Alpine, the first
[1:05] option. It doesn't really matter which
[1:07] one you select. So, I'm just going to go
[1:08] ahead with the first option. I do
[1:10] recommend you skip the API only because
[1:12] I'm going to be covering that again. So,
[1:14] we're just going to go with the first
[1:15] option. And I don't care about dark mode
[1:17] for the course. I'm going to select
[1:19] pest. And that's it. So now we should
[1:21] have a new Lo project. If you already
[1:23] have an existing one, you can skip this
[1:25] part and follow on the next step.
[1:29] All right. For database, you can select
[1:30] any of these you like. I'm going to go
[1:32] with skill light because it doesn't
[1:33] require any setup. And I'm also going to
[1:35] run the default migrations.
[1:39] All right. Now, with the setup done,
[1:40] let's go ahead and open up uh this
[1:42] project in our code editor real quick.
[1:46] Okay guys, so my project installation is
[1:48] done. And I have also gone ahead and
[1:50] opened the project in my editor. So
[1:53] before we actually get started, you
[1:55] might be looking at if you are looking
[1:56] at some older courses online, uh you
[1:59] might end up noticing that there is no
[2:01] API. Here some some older courses I
[2:04] think prior to Larl 9 or 10. There used
[2:07] to be a default API. PHP that is no
[2:10] longer here. So the first step we need
[2:11] to do is actually to install API support
[2:14] for Laravel. And for that we need to
[2:16] actually run a command. So, open up your
[2:17] terminal and make sure you have
[2:20] navigated to your project root
[2:21] directory, which is where I am right
[2:23] now. And we need to run the following
[2:25] artisan command. So, I'm going to run
[2:26] PHP artisan
[2:30] install API.
[2:33] And what this command will do, it will
[2:35] add some boiler plate code that allows
[2:37] us to support APIs. It also add some
[2:40] additional changes that I'm going to
[2:42] cover real quick. It's also going to ask
[2:44] you to publish some new database
[2:46] migrations. I'm going to go ahead and
[2:48] hit yes. Do that as well. So once you do
[2:51] that, the first thing you notice is it
[2:53] added a new database migration file. So
[2:56] it's under database migrations. It's
[3:00] this file. So it's going to be create
[3:03] personal access tokens. Uh we're going
[3:05] to be covering that on later episode.
[3:07] This is for a lot of sanctum and it's
[3:09] going to allow us to do authentication
[3:11] and authorization for our APIs. So it's
[3:14] quite powerful. Uh one more change that
[3:16] it's going to also do is it's going to
[3:18] add this new API.php
[3:20] route file. So this one is very useful.
[3:22] We're going to actually be defining all
[3:24] our APIs inside this file. Okay, let's
[3:28] get right into it. So now that we have
[3:29] done the initial setup, it's actually
[3:31] very easy to create our first API. It's
[3:34] very similar to how you would do it with
[3:35] normal web.php. PHP. All you have to do
[3:38] is just simply do route
[3:40] followed by the HTTP request you want.
[3:43] So in this case, I'm going to go with a
[3:44] get request.
[3:46] Next up, you need to define your URL or
[3:49] URI. In this case, we're going to be
[3:51] building something super simple. For the
[3:52] first episode, I'm going to say hello
[3:53] for hello world. And last but not least
[3:56] here, you can either pass in a
[3:59] controller or for now, I'm going to keep
[4:01] it super simple and I'm going to have an
[4:02] inline function, basically an anonymous
[4:05] function. So I'm going to say function
[4:07] and I'm just going to define net over
[4:10] here. Okay, on the next episode we got
[4:11] are going to have a controller. So don't
[4:13] worry about that. Now that we have
[4:15] defined our route, usually if you have
[4:17] an API, you want to return some sort of
[4:19] JSON in your response. That's actually
[4:21] very easy to do with Laravel. All we
[4:23] have to do is do return response.
[4:27] And on this response helper, there is a
[4:29] JSON over here and this will allow you
[4:32] to return JSON to your clients super
[4:34] easily. Okay, so for the first parameter
[4:37] is going to be what we are returning,
[4:39] right? So that's going to be the
[4:40] response of our API and this is going to
[4:42] take an associative array in PHP and you
[4:46] can return anything you want. So let's
[4:47] say I want to return a message
[4:52] and I'm going to return let's say hello
[4:56] world. All right, just for now some
[4:59] basic content returned. Don't forget the
[5:02] semicolon.
[5:04] And that's it. Okay, this is our first
[5:07] super basic API. So, let's go ahead and
[5:09] save this and open this up in a browser.
[5:13] So, I have my project open over here.
[5:16] Uh, now one thing you may notice if you
[5:18] go ahead and do /hello,
[5:21] you will actually get this 404 not
[5:24] found, right? Even though if you look at
[5:26] our route, it is actually called hello.
[5:29] So uh what lable does is if you are
[5:31] defining an API inside this API.php file
[5:34] is it will always add an API prefix
[5:38] before all your routes. So it will
[5:40] always be API and then followed by
[5:42] hello. So that's what actually we need
[5:44] to put in. So I'm going to go back and
[5:46] change it up to API hello.
[5:50] And now you guys can see we are getting
[5:52] actually a JSON response from our API.
[5:58] Now a question you might have is like
[6:00] hey why do we need to put our routes
[6:02] inside this API.php and why can't I just
[6:05] for example go ahead and put it inside
[6:06] this web.php right what's the use case
[6:09] is it just the prefix there's actually
[6:11] more than that so usually if you have an
[6:14] API it's going to be a stateless request
[6:17] right while when you have this like
[6:19] web.php PHP files it's going to be
[6:20] stateful right so for example the user
[6:22] might already be logged in they have
[6:24] some sessions they have some cookies but
[6:26] when they are using APIs they're not
[6:28] going to have any cookies they're not
[6:29] going to have any existing sessions so
[6:31] it's going to be stateless and larville
[6:32] is going to handle these two routes
[6:34] separately also usually well actually
[6:38] not usually always by default Laravel is
[6:40] going to do CSRF authentication on
[6:43] web.php PHP routes while with API routes
[6:47] because it is stateless there is no CSRF
[6:50] protection right so if you were for
[6:52] example to put some sort of post request
[6:53] or put request inside this web.php PHP
[6:56] and you try to access it or call it
[6:58] similar to like a normal API, Laravel is
[7:01] going to be doing that CSRF protection
[7:03] check and all your calls are going to
[7:06] fail. Okay, so it's very important for
[7:07] us to put all our APIs under this
[7:11] API.php file to kind of keep it super
[7:13] simple. Okay,
[7:15] and one more change, I'll just quickly
[7:17] show it to you guys. If you go actually
[7:19] under your uh under your Bootstrap
[7:22] app.php PHP file. You will also notice
[7:24] that now there is this new line over
[7:28] here. So this is actually where Laravel
[7:30] is defining it. Right? So all the APIs
[7:32] are going to be read under this routes
[7:35] API.php file. Now later on on a later
[7:38] episode I'm going to show you guys how
[7:39] you can actually change this API prefix.
[7:41] This is customizable. So none of none of
[7:43] these are hardcoded. We can customize
[7:45] them, but those are going to be for the
[7:47] next episode. So that's it guys for
[7:49] today's episode. Super basic. I just
[7:51] wanted to cover how to get the initial
[7:53] setup done and create your first API. On
[7:56] the next episode, we're going to talk
[7:58] about how to load data from the database
[8:01] and also a bit more complex routes,
[8:03] maybe having like dynamic URLs and
[8:05] things of that nature. See you guys on
[8:07] the next episode. Have a great day. Bye.