Magento 2 - How to handle POST request with many parameters in Rest API?

Question

I'm confusing about the correct way to send parameter to POST request in Magento 2 API

For example, now I need to send a request body like this:

{
    "first_name":"test_first",
    "last_name":"test_last"
}

(it's just for example, in real situation, the number of key-value pair may be 20 or even 50)

Now I'm currently doing like this in the method declaration (in Api/NameRepositoryInterface.php, for instance)

/**
  * @param string $first_name
  * @param string $last_name
  * @return boolean
  */
public function createFullName($first_name, $last_name);

This approach is working fine, but what if there are 50 key-value pair in the request?

So I have to search for another approach, and it's here:

Now I can define Api/Data/NameInterface.php class like this

interface NameInterface
{
    const FIRST_NAME = 'first_name';
    const LAST_NAME = 'last_name';

    /**
     * @return string|null
     */
    public function getFirstName();

    /**
     * @param string $firstName
     * @return $this
     */
    public function setFirstName($firstName);

    /**
     * @return string|null
     */
    public function getLastName();

    /**
     * @param string $lastName
     * @return $this
     */
    public function setLastName($lastName);
}

And in in Api/NameRepositoryInterface.php class, I can make it like this:

/**
  * @param \Vendor\Module\Api\Data\NameInterface $name
  * @return boolean
  */
public function createFullName(\Vendor\Module\Api\Data\NameInterface $name);

It works well if in every request to this api, I always send both the first_name and last_name

---

The situation that I want to ask is: What if in the request I only want to send the first_name as parameter (in real situation, it maybe 30/50 total key-value of NameInterface class)

How can we handle that case?

Do we have to create a new class called Api/Data/NameRequestInterface.php and copy again 30 fields?

I think there must be some better way for this situation, prevent us from repeating our code

Anyone has idea? Thank you.

Answer 1

you can simply send array as json. Here is example..

Vendor/Module/Api/ServiceInterface.php

namespace Vendor\Module\Api;

interface ServiceInterface
{
    /**
     * @param mixed $services
     * @return void
     */
    public function saveInformation(
        $services
    );
}

Vendor/Module/Model/Service.php

namespace Vendor\Module\Model;

use Vendor\Module\Api\ServiceInterface;

class Service implements ServiceInterface
{
    /**
     * {@inheritDoc}
     */
    public function saveInformation(
        $services
    ) {
        //some logic
    }
}

Send request:

{
    "services": {
        "first_name":"test_first",
        "last_name":"test_last"
    }
}