RESTful Api还是直接访问？

I'm asking this question because some of the websites is visited seems to be using a RESTful API to access the data even if it's on the website...

For example: my website will have 6 pages and 5 of them use the DB. But, I will also have a REST api for my partners...

So, the question is:

On my website, is it better to access directly the DB via mysqli_query or to use a RESTful API with Ajax calls to load data?

Just a note: I'll be using Zend Framework 2 for my RESTful API except if someone has a better option... I know Node.js and PHP... I'm able to write it in Ruby or something if it's better for me... Need a opinion on that...

Use the RESTful API.

The specification of REST is that we use the HTTP methods, which he calls verbs.(GET, POST, PUT, DELETE).

A direct request would be limiting it, or you would be using at most two method (verbs) - GET and POST.

For that you have to do this:

GET /user/frederick/edit
GET /user/frederick/update
GET /user/frederick/delete
GET /user/new

And with a RESTful API:

GET /user/frederick/
POST /user/new/
PUT /user/frederick/
DELETE /user/frederick/

The advantage of using your own API is that you don't have to write duplicate code. For example, you might have generate_for_rest and generate_for_server functions that do the same thing and just emit data in different formats. It's a good idea to reuse your own APIs as much as you can.

That said, I do find it a bit unusual that a website would communicate to itself with its own RESTful API. That requires an HTTP request (though it should be extremely fast) and conversion of the data twice. Instead it would make more sense to have an API that generates the data that you need and a facade that converts that data into formats for it to be used.

For example you could have a function get_all_users. Internally you can use get_all_users to get the results as php data structures that you can use immediately. In your controller that responds to HTTP requests you may do a JSON conversion, but you shouldn't be doing any duplicate work to get the data for either internal or external use.