Creating reusable controllers

In Yii you can create reusable controllers. If you are creating a lot of applications or controllers that are of the same type, moving all common code into a reusable controller will save you a lot of time.

In this recipe we will create a simple reusable api controller that will implement a simple JSON CRUD API for a model. It will take input data from POST and GET and will respond with JSON data and a corresponding HTTP response code.

Getting ready

1. Create a fresh Yii application using yiic webapp.

2. Create a database and execute the following SQL:

   CREATE TABLE `post` (
     `id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
     `text` text,
     `title` varchar(255) default NULL,
     PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
   );

3. Configure the application to use the database created and generate a model using Gii. In our example we'll use the Post model, but you can use any model you want.

How to do it...

1. Create protected/extensions/json_api/JsonApiController.php:

   <?php
   class JsonApiController extends CController...