Question

Currently in my PHP-based applications I use a file, for instance services.php and call it via AJAX to return the appropriate data.

To call a certain method, I send a parameter in the GET. For instance services.php?action=read_article. From this point, it’ll hit a huge switch statement until it finds the appropriate case and returns the data I’m looking for.

Technically, everything works properly, but I can’t help but feel that it isn’t the right way to do it.

Is there a better way to implement web services in PHP?

Answer 1

The action switch is fine, if your using OOP you can have it call various methods to keep it small like..

switch ($_GET['action']) {
    case "blah":
        return $this->doBlah();
        break;
    case "foo":
        return $this->doFoo();
        break;
    default:
        return $this->doError();
}

Alternatively you could do what other frameworks do and map a URL into a method like..

/services/read/

Maps to class “Services” and method “Read” take a look at Codeigniter for how they do this.