Laravel API Basics: Build Your First RESTful API

1. Introduction: Hi there, and welcome to this class on LAL API Basics. Build your first restful API. My name is Shah, and I'm a web developer with over 14 years of experience in building full stack applications. In this class, I'm exited to guide you through the process of building a simple but powerful, restful API using LAL, one of the most popular PHP frameworks in the industry. Whether you are just getting started with al or looking to start on your beacon skills, this class is designed for beginners who want to understand how APS works and how to create them the right way. Together, we will walk step by step through setting up Al creating routes and controllers, working with the databases using equivalent and returning clean JSON responses using APA resources. By the end of this class, you will have built a fully functional student registration API with full curd operations. So if you are ready to level up your aol skills and build up your very first API, let's dive in and get started. See you in the first class. 2. Composer Install: One. Welcome to this lecture. In this lecture, we are going to install PHP composer. Let me show you further, go to Google and search PHB composer. Go to composer official website, click on Download. Here, you will see the apps and two, download composer setup X click on. The executable file will get download Once download, so in folder. Let's install. Select Install for all user. Click Next. Select your PHB path. Click Next. Again, next, click Install. It will take two to 3 minutes. You have successfully installed compressor Verson. Let's our compressor Versum. Go to your terminal. Type composer V. C, our composer resin is 2.8 pin four. Thank you. 3. Install Laragon: Hello, won. Welcome to this lecture. In this lecture, we are going to install Laragan asever Local server. Let's begin. Go to your browser and search aragan. Go to argon Apical website, click on Download. It will take you to the LarganOL website. Here, you will see the ps and two download Laragan. Click Download. The executable file will get download. Almost 173 B. It depends on your Internet speed. I'm going to pass this video ni. Download has been completed. Let's open this file in our download folder. Let's begin our installation. Select Language. Click Okay. Select the folder where you want to install Aragon. Click Next. Again, next, and click Install. Our installation has been completed. Click. Thank you. See you on next picture. 4. VSCode Install: Loan. Welcome to this lecture. In this lecture, we are going to install Visual Studio code for our project editor. Let's begin. Open your browser and search VS code. Go to Visual Studio official website and click on Download. Here, there are multiple operating system available. Select your operating system. In my case, it is Windows the executable file will get download. It will be around 100 MB in size. The downward speed, it depends on your Internet speed and system configuration. Almost finished. Okay. Our download has been completed. Click son folder. This is our EXE file. Actually, I have already installed VS code on my magazine, so I'm not going to install in this video. Just follow the instruction and finish your setup. Thank you. 5. Laravel Install: Hello, everyone. Welcome to this lecture. In this lecture, we are going to install Law in our local environment. Let's get started. Open your browser and search Law. And this is a official website, lawl.com, go to the official website. From there, you can find the Opsin documentation. Click on Documentation. On the top right, as you can see, this is the latest version of owl, which is 12. And on the left side, there is prologue, do release notes. The latest version of the ravel, which is released done 24th, February 2025. And as you can see here, Laoltwel continues the improvement made in Laowleleven point x by updating upstring dependencies and introducing new starter kits for react, view, and live. Okay. Now, go to getting started and go to installation. Bow down a little bit. To install owl, we need to install PHP and composer. We have already installed in our local environment, copy this command, composer global ke Al slash installer, copy, and go to aragon click Start al Goerinal and pase a command over here and hit end. Okay. Go back to LA official website. And to create a new application, we need to run this command, LAL Nu and our project directory name. Copy this and go to terminal again and page the command. Instead of example app, let's name it our project as A dash APL. Hit Enter and it will ask you some questions like, which starter kit would you like to install? Select none. Our installation is in progress. Which database will your application use? Select MySQL Default database updated. Would you like to run the default database migration? Select no as for now. We will migrate it later. Would you like to run NBMNBMunbil? Select no as for now. Fine. Next, we need to create database for our LAL project. Go to aragon and go to database, click Open and here on the agon dot Mays gal, right click and you will find the Opson create new and select database. Create new database for our Law Pull project. Let name it as Law and the sce APL. Click. Here is our database. We have successfully created database for our aaalPject and go to LaganTeminal, move inside our project directory, which is CD space all APAF here, type codspacdt I will open our project into VSCO. Okay. And from there go to dot ENV file. Here, we need to configure our database. Here you can see our DB connection as MSTLHstname pod number 3306, and our database name is lalTwelUnerscore API. Use the name for our local host root and there is no password. Okay, we successfully configure our database connection in DNV file, close this, and go back to LaraganTominal. Now we are going to migrate our database. PHP TSNEnter here, there are three tables have been migrated. Let's check with our database, go to database, and this is our database, right? Click reference. Here, few tables has been successfully migrated. Okay, right, we are successfully install aol in our local environment. 6. Laravel File Structure: Hi everyone. Welcome to this lecture. In this lecture, we'll walk through Al file structure. The Al file structure is organized to make development inti with separate directories for different responsibilities. First, there is an app folder. The core application code reside here, including the business logic and models. Inside app folder, there is an STTB model providers and view. Inside HDDB there is controller folders. It contains controller class for handling request, and there is request folder. Request, it's a custom form request for Valdes and logi, here we have model folder. It contains equivalent ORM model representing your database tables. And then here we have boost up folder. It contains AbdtPHB which boost up the application. And there is cache folder. Stores frameworks generated files for performing optimizations and there is convict folder. It contains configuration file for various parts of the application. Example, Abt PHP, database, and Q PHP, et cetera. And there is database folder. And inside database folder, we have factories, migration and CDs. Inside factories, define model factories for generating test data and the migration contains migration file for database schema changes. And CDS it contains classes for populating the database with initial data. And here there we have public folder. Public, it contains publicly accessible directory. For example, images, style sets, all our files will come inside this directory only. And here we have resources folder. Inside resources, there is CSS JS views. Inside views, Blade template for the front end applications are there. In Then we have routes folder. It contains all the routes for our website. There is web dot PHB, routes for the web interfaces. And there is Console dot PHP, defines custom artisan commands. And then we have storage folder for storing files generated are used by the application. App folder, here we have framework and logs. Inside logs, all the application log files will be stored under p folder, custom applications file will be created. And there is test folder. It contains test cases for unit and feature testing. And then we have vendor folder. It contains all the composer dependencies, which means third party libraries will comes under this folder only. Here we have dot NV file. Environment specific configuration file. Here, we define variables like database credentials, APIs, et cetera. Then there is an artisan file, a command line interface tool for variable, various tasks like running migrations, creating controller models and middle was. There is an composer dot JSMfle defines PHP dependencies and Auto loading. Here we have package dot JSMf for managing JavaScript dependencies and friend en tools. Thank you. 7. API ROUTE: Heller one. Welcome to this lecture. In this lecture, we are going to install API route. Under the route folder, there are only 35, which is console and web. Inside web, all the routes related to our Front on will be present over here. And by default, there is no AP route. Now we are going to install it to install AP route, run this command, PHB, artisan install Poland API. Okay, or new database migration has been published. We like to run all bending database migration selects. Okay, personal access token table has been migrated into our database. Go to database. Collect our database DVRs. As you can see, there is a new table called personal access toque. And also inside Routes folder, there is a new file called ab dot PHB, which is responsible for all APA routes. Here, we need to mention our APA routes. All right. In this lecture, we have successfully installed APA route for our project. See you on next lecture. Thank you. 8. Test API: Hello, everyone. Welcome to this lecture. In previous lecture, we have successfully installed AP route for our al project. And in this video, we are going to create our first APA route. Go to terminal, open new terminal. And here, now we are going to create a new controller for our AP. To create a new controller, run this command, PHB, Artisan, make colon, controller, inside API folder, API slash. Then we create a new controller card. Test. API controller. Enter. It will create a new file inside our RGTBler inside controller. There will be a new folder called EPA inside APA, there will be a new file test APA controller. This is our test APA controller. After creating controller, we need to specify our APA route. Command this out for now. We will enable it later. Okay. Here route, colon, colon, G here we need to give our URI, which is Ap endpoint. Let me say it does Test. Next, we need to load our APA controller, which is Tiest API controller, make sure that it has imported at the top, colon colon class, and here we need to mention our method. And give name for our out. Save the file. We have created one test out for our API. Now we are going to check our route list. PHB, artisan, Route colon list. I will show all the routes in our Lol project. And here is our newly created APA route. Just get method, and the URI of our route is AP slash test. Okay. Next, we need to create a method in our test APA control. Or method name is test. And here you are going to simply written API works. Go to your browser and and here APA our AP, slash test. As you can see, this is our output, which is we have written inside our AP controller method, APA works. Now we are going to wten the same response in JSON format. Further written response JSO status, success, and message, let it say. API works. Save the file, go to a browser, simply refers the page. And as you can see, our respon is in JSNFmat. All right. In this video, we have successfully created controller for our API, and also we have mentioned our route in routes apt pHB we have created method in our test APA controller, and here we have returned our response as a JSON format. Thank you. See you on next lich. 9. Install Postman: Hello, everyone. In our project, we are going to use Postman as our API client. Let's see what is Postman. Postman is a powerful API platform that simplifies API development, testing, and collaborations. It provides a user friendly interface to send request, valid responses, and manage ABs efficiently. Used by developers, testers, and teams worldwide, Postman supports risk, SOP and graphule APIs. I E features. Send APA request. Test endpoint with G, post, put, delete, et cetera. Organize endpoint into reusable and sharable groups by using corrections. We can dynamically switch between development, staging, and protection by using environment variables. Testing. Valid our APA responses with JavaScript based tests. Documentation, automatically generate and share AP documentation. Why use Postman? Ease of use. Ititive interface and templates started quickly. Collaboration. Teams can share APIs, collections, and results automation. Save time with automated testing, integration works with CICD pipelines to streamline deployments. Comprehensive protocol support, analyse rest, sort, graph cual and both. Next, we are going to install Postman. Go to your browser, search Postman. Go to Postman official website, ww.postman.com. Here you will see the Option two, download Postman. It will take you to the download page of Postman website. Click Window 64 bit. The executable file is downloading. Our download has been completed. Now we are going to Install Post Mal. Okay. We have successfully install Posterman. You can create account by clicking Create Account Upson. It will take you to web browser. And here you need to input your email address and use a name and password. Click Create free account to create account. I have already created account with Postman, so I'm going to sign in directly. I already if you are already registered with Postman, you can sign in using your credential, click Sign in. Okay. We have successfully signed in postman account. 10. Student Registration API: Hello, everyone. Welcome to this Dixon. In this section, we are going to create a very basic API, which is student registration API. And here we are going to create APA for student registration and also we are going to create a APA get all the student data and how to get a single user data by using APA and also we are going to create APA for editing student data by student ID, and we're going to create APA for deleting student from API. Let's get started. First, we're going to create a new migration model. PHP, Artisan, M, colon, model, which is student and also create migration for this model by using Dacium. All right. Here, there is two file has been created Ous model five, which is under app model student PHP. And another file or migration five, which is created under database migration. And here is our migration table five. Okay. Let's define table columns first. Table, string name. Table, string, E. It must be unique. And let's create another column E num and column name, gender, and allowed absence, which is male, female. Okay. Save the file. Now we need to migrate this table to migrate table. You need to use this command, PHP Artisan, migrate. I enter our newly created table has been migrated into our database. Chick the migration, go to database as you can see, here is a newly created table, which is student and here we have a field name, Emil and gent. Okay. Next, go to models, openstuden dot pHB. And here we need to make all the fields are fillable. Protector fillable inside array, specify our column name, name, EI and Jen. Okay. Save file. All right. We have successfully created model and migration for our student registration API. And the next video, I will show you how to create route and controller method for our student registration process. Thank you. 11. Student Data GET API: Level one. Welcome to this lecture. In the previous lecture, we have created model and migration table, and we have migrated our table into our database for our student API. And in this lecture, I will show you how to create route and controller for our student registration API. Let's get started. First, we are going to create new controller power student registration APN. To create a controller, run this command, PHB, artisan, make Colon controller, and inside API folder, APSAs student API controller. And this is going to be a resource controller. And there's this API, a tender. I'll create a new file under our folder inside our HTTP. Go to app HTTP controller. Inside API folder, there is a new file called student API Controller. And as we created a resource route, there is a default method called index store, show update and destra. From index method, we can get all the student data and this method we can use it for create student and this method we can use it for getting a single student data and this method, update, we can update student data and this method we use to delete student data. Bye. Next, we're going to create route for our student registration, go to routes API, Trout colon colon API resource, and endpoint students here load our controller, which is student API control. Colon colon class. Save the file. Now we are going to sack our route list by running this command, PHB partisan route list. Okay, go at the top. And as you can see, there are a few APAs created since we are using a resource route. Here is our get method, AP slash student, and here's another method called post to create student data. And here is another method, student slash. Here, we need to pass a student ID to get a single student data and here put our patch to update the student data. And here is another APA called delete APA to delete the student data. Okay. Now we are going to create our logic part. Go to student AB Controller. On the index method, we're going to get all the student data by loading our student model. Student colon colon, get and store the result in a variable called students. Here we are going to return our response data. Return response. The and format. Status. Success and data will be our student data. And here, mentioned the status goal as 200, which is response for success. Success response. Now we are going to test this API in our postman AB client. Open Postman. And from the collection section, click on the play symbol to create a new collection. Select Blank colexon and name meters Laural API. And click Add a request. Get all students. Here, we need to specify our method name, which is get and here we need to give our API endpoint and our APA end pointers, check our Out list. Aps students. Before that, we need to give our URL, which is L las pot Okay. Enter, I sent. And as you can see, we got success response. Here is the status success, and there is no data. That's why we are getting the MTRA and here is our status sce 200 recs successful. The server has responded as required. Okay, on the next lecture, we will create AP for our student registries. Thank you. See you on next lecture. 12. Create Student Using API: Layer one. Welcome to this lecture. In this lecture, we are going to create a new student data and we store it to our database table. For this, we need to use this AP method, which is inside our student APA controller. Our method em is store and our AP method is post method. Open student AP Controller. And go inside the store method, first, we need to validate our input request. For this, we need to use validator facades, validator colon colon M here we need to pass two parameters, which is request data and another Owners, our validation rules. What are the fields we have in our student table? Check our database. We have name field, email field, and gender field, right? So all the three fields are required. Name which is required and Emil Also required. Gender, AR. And here we can add few more rules by separating pipeline symbol. That's a minimum four character. And Emil face unique and our table name is students and our column name emails with. If there is any validator error means, I validator fails, we are simply written the error message in JSON format, written response, Jason. Status file messages, we need to return our valid data Rs. Okay. Save the file and go to Postman and inside our a AP collection, create a new collection. New request. Name it does create student, and here, our methods post method, and our AP endpoint, which is Ap students. And as you can see, method post and our Ap endpoint is a students. Okay. And inside our body, collect raw data and select as JSON and simply send without passing any data to check whether our validation is working or not, click Send. As you can see, status message, the name field is required, email field is required, gender field is required, and here we got 200 response. We need to change this status quote and go to here, set 400. To mention this record request is bad request. Click send, as you can see, 400, bad requast. Okay. Our validation is wping fine. Let's test it out. Our additional validation. As you can see, the name field must be at least four character. Our additional validation for the name field is working fine here. Okay. Now we are going to save all the data. Request of all getting all our request data, which is name, email, gender, and store it to the variable called data. And now we are going to load our student model, student colon colon, use method to create data, which is create and here we need to pass our data as a bi. It will store data into our database table, which is students. Once the student data has created, we need to written response, as a success response, written response. Status, success, and message. Let it say student created successful. And our status score 201. Okay, save the file, go to Postman. Okay, name, name agenda. Click Sent. As you can see, we got success response status succes student created successful. Go to get student API. We got one response. Here is our student data, which is we have created recently. Fine. We have successfully created APA for our create student data. Let me test it out whether you're going to create a new student data which is student two with the same email address, we would get the El message. This is what we have mentioned in our APA method. The email must be unique, right click send the email has already been taken. Our validation is working fine. All right. In this video, we have created API method and store the data into our student database using APA. Thank you. See you on. Next lecture. 13. Get Single Data: Level one. Welcome to this lecture. In this lecture, we are going to get a single student data from our API. And to get a single student data, we need to use this API, AP slash students and from the URL, we need to pass the student ID, and our AP method name is SHOP Open our student APA controller. And go inside the show method. And here, we're going to load our student model and find. Here we need to pass our student ID as a parameter and store the data into the variable called student. Okay. Give student, then we're going to return response. Access and data will be our student data. If there is no student, then we are going to return. Then status as failure. Status fail, and message. No user form. With the status que 404 and here with the status que 200. Go to Postman, create a new request inside our collection and request and name it us get student data. And our APA endpoint. Which is ap students, then student ID. Was this student ID one, click Send. We got the single student data. And here, let me pass invalid ID, we'll get status we, no user form or APs, cooking, fine. Let me create another student. Go to get all student here, we have two data and go to get student data, Bypass the IDs to, and we got the data for the student ID two. All right. We have successfully created a GPI to get a single student data. Thank you. See you next picture. 14. Edit Data By ID PUT API: Level one. Welcome to this lecture. In this lecture, we are going to update the student data through our APR and our API endpoint is Apsuts. Here we need to pass our student ID and our API method is we can either use Put or patch. Now here we are going to use Put method and go to student APA controller and go to the update method, and here the parameter, you're getting the request and the student ID. First, we need to validate our input request. Validata validata facades, colon, colon, make and here. We need to pass to argument which is our request data and another one is our validation rules, right? Name required and minimum four characters and EMI, which is required. It must be unique from the table students and the column the column name is EMI and except the ID, which is request which is our parameter ID. And the Gena required. Okay. If there is any validation error means validator fails writen responses error. Status p and written message as validated here. Okay. And with the status cue, 400 further bad fiqest. Okay. After validation, we need to check whether the student is exist in our database or. Further, we need to load our database first. We need to load our model first, which is student colon colon fine, pass our ID as a parameter and store this result in a variable student. If there is no student not student, written response, Jason, and the status fail. Message, no student form with a status quo, four not four. If there is a student, then we are going to update the student student of Ni which is from our request, request of Ni and student of EMI, which is from our request, request of Emil Okay student of ender, which is also from our request a request of Gender. And finally, save the student by calling save method. Okay. Once student data has been updated, we need to return a response as success response with the updated student message student data updated successfully. The data, and just go into our updated student data Lav stud with a status code. Save the file, go to Bosman and create a new APA request. Let's says Ed student. Method as put AB endpoint, which is ApudenO student ID. Now we are going to edit the second student pass this ideas two and I'm going to change the name as this. Non past it over gap. And here, change the name as student Test three. EmilizTs three and gender this may click sent we got error. Here we are getting this error column not found, which means our email validation is not working. So here, required unique student email. Here, we need to remove this exert. Save the file, and now it's working fine. Okay, here the student data has been updated successfully, and let's give the invalid ID. Status pile 400 bad request. The email has been already taken. We got the status spile no student form. In this video, we have successfully created our API for updating student data. The next video, I will show you how to delete the student data through our API. Thank you. See you next lich. 15. Delete API: Play. Welcome to this lecture. In this lecture, we will implement the functionality to delete the student data through our API. To delete the student data, we need to use this method, destra method in our student AP controller, and our AP method will be delete method. Go to student API Controller. And go to the destry method. And here, first, find the student whether it is exist or not. For that we need to load our student model find by ID store the result in variable c student. If there is no student with the ID, then we will simply return. Invalid student status, fail and message like student not for the status 44 not four. If there is any student, then Student student. Database. Then set. Status success message student, delete successfully. I stay the score, use it. Go to Postman and create a new request. Delete student and our method name, delete. And our AP endpoint, Aplas here we need to pass our student ID, which is two. First, I'm going to give a invalid student ID to check whether our valation is working or not, Clicken student not form. Our valdN is working fine. Now I'm going to delete the data of ID two. Further here I am passing the ID as two ClickNd. We got status success student deleted successfully. Go to get all student API and here we got only one response. All right. In this section, we have successfully created our very basic API for the student registration process and from there, we can learn about how to retrieve data from API by using G method and how to create data and how to validate the request data we have learned about how to get a single data from API and also we edit functionality through our API, and also we have learned about how to delete the student through API. Thank you. See you on next lecture. 16. Class Wrap Up: Hello, everyone. Welcome to this lecture. Let me walk through what we have done so far in this section. We have created a new APA resource controller, which is student APA controller, and in APA routes, we have defined our resource route as APA resource, and we have created model five under models folder app models. This is our Model five student PHB. And here we have make all the fields are fillable. And also we have created migration table for this model, which is this one. And by using this, we have created code operations, which is create, read, update, and delete. And also we have tested our API in Postman API client. And now it's time to push our code to the Github for that. First, we need to check the status status. These are the fives has been modified. Git R. Next, Git message as basic API. Enter Gig. Go Gita. And as you can see, our latest amid has been successfully pushed to our Github prepostering. Thank you. See you next lecture. 17. Conclusion: Hello all. First of all, I would like to thank you and congratulate on finishing this class. Let's see what we have done in this class so far. I hope you have learned how to install composer, which is PHP dependency and how to install agon for a local server for Laval project, and you have installed VS code for the code editor and you have learned how to successfully install Lal on a local server and how the file structure is defined in aaalPject also you have learned to create a simple API card operations. I hope you have gained some valuable knowledge from this class. If you like this class, please feel free to leave your feedback. Thank you. See you on my next class.