Build API clients for PHP

In this tutorial, you build a sample app in PHP that calls a REST API that doesn't require authentication.

Required tools

• PHP ^7.4 or ^8.0
• Composer

Create a project

Run the following commands in the directory where you want to create a new project.

composer init

Project configuration

In case you're adding a Kiota client to an existing project, the following configuration is required:

• composer.json > require > php set to "php": "^8.0 || ^7.4" or later.

Add dependencies

Before you can compile and run the generated API client, you need to make sure the generated source files are part of a project with the required dependencies. Your project must have a reference to the abstraction package. Additionally, you must either use the Kiota default implementations or provide your own custom implementations of the following packages.

• HTTP (Kiota default Guzzle-based implementation)
• JSON serialization (Kiota default)
• Text serialization (Kiota default)

For this tutorial, use the default implementations.

Run the following commands to get the required dependencies.

composer require microsoft/kiota-abstractions
composer require microsoft/kiota-http-guzzle
composer require microsoft/kiota-serialization-json
composer require microsoft/kiota-serialization-text

Generate the API client

Kiota generates API clients from OpenAPI documents. Create a file named posts-api.yml and add the following.

openapi: '3.0.2'
info:
  title: JSONPlaceholder
  version: '1.0'
servers:
  - url: https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/

components:
  schemas:
    post:
      type: object
      properties:
        userId:
          type: integer
        id:
          type: integer
        title:
          type: string
        body:
          type: string
  parameters:
    post-id:
      name: post-id
      in: path
      description: 'key: id of post'
      required: true
      style: simple
      schema:
        type: integer

paths:
  /posts:
    get:
      description: Get posts
      parameters:
      - name: userId
        in: query
        description: Filter results by user ID
        required: false
        style: form
        schema:
          type: integer
          maxItems: 1
      - name: title
        in: query
        description: Filter results by title
        required: false
        style: form
        schema:
          type: string
          maxItems: 1
      responses:
        '200':
          description: OK
          content:
            application/json:
              schema:
                type: array
                items:
                  $ref: '#/components/schemas/post'
    post:
      description: 'Create post'
      requestBody:
        required: true
        content:
          application/json:
            schema:
              $ref: '#/components/schemas/post'
      responses:
        '201':
          description: Created
          content:
            application/json:
              schema:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/post'
  /posts/{post-id}:
    get:
      description: 'Get post by ID'
      parameters:
      - $ref: '#/components/parameters/post-id'
      responses:
        '200':
          description: OK
          content:
            application/json:
              schema:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/post'
    patch:
      description: 'Update post'
      requestBody:
        required: true
        content:
          application/json:
            schema:
              $ref: '#/components/schemas/post'
      parameters:
      - $ref: '#/components/parameters/post-id'
      responses:
        '200':
          description: OK
          content:
            application/json:
              schema:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/post'
    delete:
      description: 'Delete post'
      parameters:
      - $ref: '#/components/parameters/post-id'
      responses:
        '200':
          description: OK

This file is a minimal OpenAPI description that describes how to call the /posts endpoint in the JSONPlaceholder REST API.

You can then use the Kiota command line tool to generate the API client classes.

kiota generate -l PHP -d ../posts-api.yml -c PostsApiClient -n KiotaPosts\Client -o ./client

Add the following to your composer.json to set your namespaces correctly:

"autoload": {
    "psr-4": {
        "KiotaPosts\\Client\\": "client/"
    }
}

To ensure the newly generated classes can be imported, update the autoload paths using:

composer dumpautoload

Create the client application

Create a file in the root of the project named main.php and add the following code.

<?php

use KiotaPosts\Client\PostsApiClient;
use KiotaPosts\Client\Models\Post;
use Microsoft\Kiota\Abstractions\ApiException;
use Microsoft\Kiota\Abstractions\Authentication\AnonymousAuthenticationProvider;
use Microsoft\Kiota\Http\GuzzleRequestAdapter;

require __DIR__.'/vendor/autoload.php';

try {
    $authProvider = new AnonymousAuthenticationProvider();
    $requestAdapter = new GuzzleRequestAdapter($authProvider);
    $client = new PostsApiClient($requestAdapter);

    // GET /posts
    $allPosts = $client->posts()->get()->wait();
    $postCount = sizeof($allPosts);
    echo "Retrieved {$postCount} posts.\n";

    // GET /posts/{id}
    $specificPostId = 5;
    $specificPost = $client->posts()->byPostId($specificPostId)->get()->wait();
    echo "Retrieved post - ID: {$specificPost->getId()}, Title: {$specificPost->getTitle()}, Body: {$specificPost->getBody()}\n";

    // POST /posts
    $newPost = new Post();
    $newPost->setUserId(42);
    $newPost->setTitle("Testing Kiota-generated API client");
    $newPost->setBody("Hello world!");

    $createdPost = $client->posts()->post($newPost)->wait();
    echo "Created new post with ID: {$createdPost->getId()}\n";

    // PATCH /posts/{id}
    $update = new Post();
    // Only update title
    $update->setTitle("Updated title");

    $updatedPost = $client->posts()->byPostId($specificPostId)->patch($update)->wait();
    echo "Updated post - ID: {$updatedPost->getId()}, Title: {$updatedPost->getTitle()}, Body: {$updatedPost->getBody()}\n";

    // DELETE /posts/{id}
    $client->posts()->byPostId($specificPostId)->delete()->wait();
}catch (ApiException $ex) {
    echo $ex->getMessage();
}
?>

Run the application

To start the application, run the following command in your project directory.

php main.php

See also

• kiota-samples repository contains the code from this guide.
• Microsoft Graph sample using Microsoft identity platform authentication
• ToDoItem Sample API implements a sample OpenAPI in ASP.NET Core and sample clients in multiple languages.