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Version: 9.x

Containers Installer

Containers​

Apiato ships with a few pre-defined and pre-configured containers. However, other developers may provide additional features in form of a respective container. This section explains, how so called 3rd party containers may be automatically downloaded and installed to your specific web application.

Note that this feature is only available for apiato > 4.1.3

Downloading and Installing 3rd Party Containers​

A curated list of awesome Apiato containers https://github.com/apiato/awesome-apiato

In order to use a specific container that is developed by a 3rd party developer, apiato provides an easy-to-use solution for downloading, installing and continuously updating containers from 3rd party developers.

As an application developer, you simply need to include the respective vendor/project to the composer.json file within the app/Containers folder.

For example, the respective /app/Containers/composer.json file may look something like this:

{
  "name": "apiato/containers",
  "description": "Composer file to include 3rd party containers.",
  "require": {
    "johannesschobel/apiato-null" : "dev-master"
  }
}

You just need to call composer update in order to install the respective packages. The package (e.g., the container) johannesschobel/apiato-null is then installed to the /app/Container folder. However, the developer of the package needs to follow some basic guidelines listed below.

Warning: Do not modify content within a downloaded container, as it will be overwritten if you call composer update.

Developing a Container​

Developing a container that can be used by others is quite easy. Basically, you can extract already existing functionality in a new container and provide the features. Note that you need to upload the container to GitHub and then release it on Packagist in order to be available via Composer. Please see a respective tutorial how to submit a package to GitHub and release it via Packagist.

In particular, the only thing that needs to be done, when developing a container, is to provide a specific composer.json file within the main folder of the container.

An example of such a composer.json file is shown below:

{
  "name": "vendor/project",
  "description": "This is a short description for your container.",
  "type": "apiato-container",   // you must set the type to "apiato-container" here!
  "require": {
    "somevendor/somepackage" : "dev-master"
    // some other requirements here
  },
  "extra": {
    "apiato": {
      "container": {
        "name": "Foo"   // The name of the container within the /app/Containers folder
      }
    }
  }
}

Important Information:

  • You must add the respective type : apiato-container to the composer file. This way, the custom installer is used that allows installing / updating containers.
  • You must provide the key extra.apiato.container.name. This key indicates the name of the folder (e.g., container) when installing the package to the /app/Containers folder. In the shown example, the container would be installed to app/Containers/Foo.