Add __toString on ApiResponse

[dextermb]

I think that we should add __toString() to ApiResponse as when returning from a controller it attempts to convert the returned object to a string, if we were to implement this it would save us from adding ->json() on the end of every API return.

Proposed code

class ApiResponse
{
    // ...

    public function __toString()
    {
        return $this->json()
    }

Thoughts? We could also implement ArrayAccess for even more accessibility.

cc @DivineOmega @JacobBrassington @wheatleyjj

[DivineOmega]

+1 on implementing __toString() in this manner.

I'm curious about your desired implementation of the ArrayAccess interface. Maybe worth making a new issue for this?

[dextermb]

@DivineOmega Nothing crazy, would just allow people to push into data. Maybe something like the example below

$initial_data = ['message' => 'hello, world'];
$response = ApiResponse::success() # or new ApiResponse or ApiResponse::error()

$response->data($initial_data);

// Edit array elements
if(false) {
    $response['message'] = 'foo bar';
}

// Add new elements to data
if(true) {
    $response['users'] = [];
}

// or just $response with __toString
return $response->json();

// Expected response after transforming data along the way
//
// {
//     "status": 200,
//     "success": true,
//     "error": null,
//     "data": {
//         'message': 'hello, world',
//         'users': []
//     }
//     "meta": null
// }

[DivineOmega]

Looks good. Shouldn't be breaking in any way.

[dextermb]

@DivineOmega Just noticed an issue, __toString must return a string... obviously but a response class is not an string so ->json() wouldn't work.

[DivineOmega]

@dextermb In that case, the best thing you could do is to make __toString return json_encode(get_object_vars($this));. It would be missing the HTTP status code, and the JSON header, though.

[dextermb]

@DivineOmega Would Laravel's response pick it up as JSON and know to respond with JSON headers?

[DivineOmega]

@dextermb No, it would return a plain text response unless to requester specifically asked for JSON.

Idea: Why not extend Illuminate\Http\Response? The class would then be a proper response itself, so there would be no need for this manual conversion.

[dextermb]

Would like to see someone have a go at this.