Phogra API

I wanted some practice building an API so I decided to work on an API for PHOtoGRAphs. I have been a hobby photographer for a long time and have used lots of different photo gallery options over the years. I have never been really happy with any of them so I decided to take another stab at making my own.

I've worked with a few different APIs in the last few years. I even wrote one at one point. As is usually the case, I would write it differently if I did it today. I've spent time looking at HATEOAS: Collection+JSON, HAL, Siren, et al. They all feel really over engineered to me. Probably because they're trying to be all things to all people. The folks at foxcart have a good write up on the travails of someone trying to figure out which one works best for them. This API will be based on JSON API, but I don't plan on adhering strictly to the standard. It will eventually be the API that drives my Phogra UI project.

###Installation notes

• The API will auto-generate thumbnails and alternate file sizes for you. PHP may need more than the default memory allotment to get this done. The Windows default, 128M, should be enough to process most standard photo sized images, which are generally in the 5-8MB range. I was able to process a 12MB image, but it was not enough to process a 30MB image that I had stitched together from several shots. 256M was enough to process the 30MB image. If your host doesn't allow you to modify the max memory parameter, you'll have to upload smaller files.
• You'll need to adjust your post_max_size in your php.ini file as necessary. It defaults to 8M, which may not be enough if you're going to let users upload images from their phone. Looking at the photos currently on my LG4, most are under 8MB, but there are a few outliers that are too large. Panoramic images get larger than 8MB very quickly.
• The companion to post_max_size is upload_max_filesize. They should be pretty close in value. Just remember that post_max_size includes the full post body. If you're going to try and finese these values, make sure post_max_size is 1-2M larger than upload_max_filesize.
• The API is also using finfo to guess at mime types. It may not be enabled by default on your platform/host. Windows users will need to enable the php_fileinfo.dll in the php.ini file. *nix users will have to figure out how to enable fileinfo.so for their environment.
• There is a phogra.php file in the config folder. The photoDir property tells the API where to put the uploaded and processed images. The photoTempDir tells the API what directory to use for temporary storage while it is generating images for you. It defaults to storage/photo-tmp. Make sure both of these folders exist and are writable by Apache.