How to build a simple app pulling contents from Pokemon API

Tutorial author: Simonarde Jr

In this example, we are going to build a simple app to show some info about a chosen Pokemon.

To get started, you'll need:

• php-cli
• ext-curl
• Composer

Creating a Simple App

First, we need to create a new project using Minicli template app, using your terminal of choice, enter the following command:

composer create-project --prefer-dist minicli/application pokemonApiConsumer

This will give us a starting point to build our app.

Creating a command

Minicli will register all commands inside the directory app/Command. The name you give to a folder inside Command is the name of your Command Namespace, so, in this example, we will create a folder called Pokemon. Cd to our app root folder and type the following command:

cd pokemonApiConsumer
mkdir app/Command/Pokemon

Now, we have to create our Controller file, this is the actual name of the command you want to execute, so, in this example, we will create a command called fetchinfo:

cd app/Command/Pokemon
touch FetchInfoController.php

Put the following code inside FetchInfoController:

<?php

namespace App\Command\Pokemon;

use Minicli\Command\CommandController;
use Minicli\Output\Filter\ColorOutputFilter;
use Minicli\Output\Helper\TableHelper;

class FetchInfoController extends CommandController
{
    public $baseApi = 'https://pokeapi.co/api/v2';

    public function handle()
    {
        if( empty($this->hasParam('name')) ) {
            $this->getPrinter()->error("Please, inform the name of Pokemon you want to fetch info.");
            $this->getPrinter()->error("Usage: ./minicli pokemon fetchinfo name=\"bulbasaur\"");
            return;
        }

        $name = $this->getParam('name');

        $this->getPrinter()->display('Showing info about ' . $name);

        $this->fetchPokemonInfo($name);

    }

    public function fetchPokemonInfo($name)
    {
        // code
    }

    public function printPokemonTableInfo($info)
    {
        // code
    }

    public function get($url)
    {
        $ch = curl_init($url);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 10);

        $response = curl_exec($ch);
        curl_close($ch);

        return $response;
    }
}

We will implement fetchPokemonInfo and printPokemonInfo in a minute, but, right now, you can call your command to see if works using:

./minicli pokemon fetchinfo name="bulbasaur"

* remember, you have to execute this command from the root of your app.

You should see something like:

Showing info about bulbasaur

Implementing fetchPokemonInfo

In this example, we are using PokeAPI. To pull the info about our chosen pokemon, we are going to use the folowing endpoint https://pokeapi.co/api/v2/pokemon/<name>, and, if you see the code we have putted inside FetchInfoController.php, we have a method called get, which uses curl to make a request to a given url. Let's use it then, inside FetchInfoController.php:

public function fetchPokemonInfo($name)
{
    $pokemonInfo = $this->get($this->baseApi . '/pokemon/' . $name);
}

If you run fetchinfo command again, you will not see any new output, that's because we are making the request to PokeAPI, but not showing anywhere. Let's fix this!

Implementing printPokemonTableInfo

Now we will display the info PokeAPI has returned in your last request. Open FetchInfoController.php and replace printPokemonTableInfo content with the following:

public function printPokemonTableInfo($info)
{
    $info = json_decode($info, true);

    $table = new TableHelper();

    $table->addHeader(['Name', 'Height', 'Weight']);
    $table->addRow([ucfirst($info['name']), $info['height'], $info['weight']]);

    $table->addHeader(['Type', '', '']);

    array_map(function($item) use ($table) {
        $table->addRow([$item['type']['name']]);
    }, $info['types']);

    $table->addHeader(['Moves', '', '']);

    array_map(function($item) use ($table) {
        $table->addRow([str_replace('-', ' ', $item['move']['name'])]);
    }, $info['moves']);

    $this->getPrinter()->rawOutput($table->getFormattedTable(new ColorOutputFilter()));
    $this->getPrinter()->newline();
}

If you run fetchinfo command again, you will notice that the info will not be shown to us. That's because we have implemented the printPokemonTableInfo, but we are not calling it. Let's call it then:

public function fetchPokemonInfo($name)
{
    $pokemonInfo = $this->get($this->baseApi . '/pokemon/' . $name);

    $this->printPokemonTableInfo($pokemonInfo);
}

Now, run fetchinfo again:

./minicli pokemon fetchinfo name="bulbasaur"

You should see some info now! Have fun!

* disclaimer: this is a very basic piece of code, and it is, by no means, the best and the cleanest way to implement a command using Minicli.