koriym/hal

application/hal builder / formatter for PHP 8.2+

Maintainers

👁 koriym

Package info

github.com/koriym/hal

pkg:composer/koriym/hal

Statistics

Installs: 36 133

Dependents: 1

Suggesters: 0

Stars: 0

1.1.0 2025-11-11 09:14 UTC

Requires

Requires (Dev)

Suggests

None

Provides

None

Conflicts

None

Replaces

None

MIT 1799d7d65d84c45edfb960a0dbb77119d8bf67a7

jsonxmlresthalhypermedia

This package is auto-updated.

Last update: 2026-06-05 15:32:27 UTC


README

Note: This is a temporary fork to provide PHP 8.2+ support while PR #64 is pending review.

👁 CI

This is a library for creating documents in the application/hal+json and application/hal+xml hypermedia formats

It requires PHP 8.2 or later.

<?php
require_once 'vendor/autoload.php';

use Nocarrier\Hal;

$hal = new Hal('/orders');
$hal->addLink('next', '/orders?page=2');
$hal->addLink('search', '/orders?id={order_id}');

$resource = new Hal(
 '/orders/123',
 array(
 'total' => 30.00,
 'currency' => 'USD',
 )
);

$resource->addLink('customer', '/customer/bob', array('title' => 'Bob Jones <bob@jones.com>'));
$hal->addResource('order', $resource);
echo $hal->asJson();
echo $hal->asXml();

Installation

The preferred method of installation is via packagist as this provides the PSR-0 autoloader functionality. The following command will download and install the latest version of the Hal library into your project.

php composer.phar require nocarrier/hal

Alternatively, clone the project and install into your project manually.

License

Nocarrier\Hal is licensed under the MIT license.

Usage

Creating Hal Resources

A Hal resource can be created with no values set:

$hal = new \Nocarrier\Hal();

with a URI for the resource:

$hal = new \Nocarrier\Hal('/orders');

and also with an array of data:

$hal = new \Nocarrier\Hal('/orders', ['customerId' => 'CUS1234']);

Hal resources can also be created from existing XML or JSON documents:

$hal = \Nocarrier\Hal::fromJson($jsonString);
$hal = \Nocarrier\Hal::fromXml($xmlString);
$hal = \Nocarrier\Hal::fromXml($simpleXMLElement);

The depth of embedded resources parsed with both these methods is controlled by a second argument, which defaults to 0:

$hal = \Nocarrier\Hal::fromJson($jsonString, 5);

Getting Representations

The Hal resource can be formatted as JSON or XML:

$hal = new \Nocarrier\Hal('/orders', ['customerId' => 'CUS1234']);
$hal->asJson();

which with a first argument of true for pretty printing:

$hal = new \Nocarrier\Hal('/orders', ['customerId' => 'CUS1234']);
$hal->asJson(true);

gives:

{
 "customerId": "CUS1234",
 "_links": {
 "self": {"href": "/orders"}
 }
}

and

$hal = new \Nocarrier\Hal('/orders', ['customerId' => 'CUS1234']);
$hal->asXml(true);

gives:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<resource href="/orders">
 <customerId>CUS1234</customerId>
</resource>

Data

The data can be set through setData and read with getData:

$hal = new \Nocarrier\Hal('/orders');
$hal->setData(['customerId' => 'CUS1234']);
$hal->getData();

Using array keys in the data for the XML representation can be done by prefixing the key with @:

$hal = new \Nocarrier\Hal('/orders');
$hal->setData(['customerId' => ['CUS1234', '@type' => 'legacy']]);

gives:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<resource href="/orders">
 <customerId value="CUS1234" type="legacy"/>
</resource>

The @ is ignored if JSON is rendered:

{
 "customerId": {
 "value": "CUS1234",
 "type":" legacy"
 },
 "_links": {
 "self": {"href": "/orders"}
 }
}

Links

Links can be added to the resource by providing the rel identifying them and a URI:

$hal = new \Nocarrier\Hal('/orders', ['customerId' => 'CUS1234']);
$hal->addLink('next', '/orders?page=2');
$hal->addLink('search', '/orders?id={order_id}');

gives:

{
 "customerId": "CUS1234",
 "_links": {
 "self": {
 "href": "/orders"
 },
 "next": {
 "href": "/orders?page=2"
 },
 "search": {
 "href": "/orders?id={order_id}"
 }
 }
}

If a Hal object has been created from a response returned from elsewhere it can be helpful to retrieve the links from it.

$json = '{
 "customerId": "CUS1234",
 "_links": {
 "self": {
 "href": "/orders"
 },
 "next": {
 "href": "/orders?page=2"
 },
 "search": {
 "href": "/orders?id={order_id}"
 }
 }
 }';

$hal = \Nocarrier\Hal::fromJson($json);

foreach($hal->getLinks() as $rel => $links) {
 echo $rel."\n";
 foreach($links as $link) {
 echo (string) $link."\n";
 }
}
next
/orders?page=2
search
/orders?id={order_id}

and

$json = '{
 "customerId": "CUS1234",
 "_links": {
 "self": {
 "href": "/orders"
 },
 "next": {
 "href": "/orders?page=2"
 },
 "search": {
 "href": "/orders?id={order_id}"
 }
 }
 }';
$hal = \Nocarrier\Hal::fromJson($json);
foreach($hal->getLink('next') as $link) {
 echo (string) $link."\n";
}

outputs:

/orders?page=2

Embedded Resources

As well as linking to resources so that the client can fetch them they can be directly embedded in the resource.

$hal = new \Nocarrier\Hal('/orders', ['customerId' => 'CUS1234']);

$resource = new \Nocarrier\Hal(
 '/orders/123',
 array(
 'total' => 30.00,
 'currency' => 'USD',
 )
);

$resource->addLink('customer', '/customer/bob', array('title' => 'Bob Jones <bob@jones.com>'));
$hal->addResource('order', $resource);

outputs:

{
 "customerId": "CUS1234",
 "_links": {
 "self": {
 "href": "/orders"
 }
 },
 "_embedded": {
 "order": [
 {
 "total": 30,
 "currency": "USD",
 "_links": {
 "self": {
 "href": "/orders/123"
 },
 "customer": {
 "href": "/customer/bob",
 "title": "Bob Jones <bob@jones.com>"
 }
 }
 }
 ]
 }
}