[RFC] Resource configuration inheritance (Sylius)

[alanpoulain]

Since API Platform is used by Sylius, there has been multiple PR to change how the resource configuration is inherited, since Sylius relies heavily on inheritance of the models to customize it:

• Bugfix | Don't try to set null values when merging metadata #3711 (merged)
• Allow overwriting parent metadata resource informations #3724
• Update resource metadata if new config is given #4012
• [WIP] allow to replace config using yaml #4314
• (Properties need to be allowed by Symfony's serializer at the same time #4031) (not really an issue with configuration inheritance)

This issue will centralize them in order to have a global view and to discuss the whole problem.

Sylius made some changes to solve these issues: Sylius/Sylius#12693.

[soyuka]

We definitely need to talk about this as we tend to have a policy of "replace" over "merge" as it provides less confusion, less weird issues and ease the maintenance.

[kayue]

The current behaviour of Api platform does "replace" some property like description, but ignored other like itemOperations. This is very weird and unexpected. If ApiPlatform decided to ignore some property it should at least throw a warning "property already defined" or maybe even "model already defined".

To me as a Sylius developer, I want to be able to at least extend a resource's itemOperations, collectionOperations or properties.

I expect ApiPlatform should work similar to Symfony's routing and security configuration.

[alanpoulain]

See also: https://locastic.com/blog/clean-api-configuration-in-sylius/

[Nek-]

Hello, just so you know... This kind of system would be interesting for any open source project that want to use API Platform... Or any people that want to enable some features on a given resource based on a flag. (I mean it's not just sylius, it critically missing)

[laurentdabbb]

Hi,
Some news ?

Does ApiPlatform 3 facilitate config replacement ?

With ApiPlatform 2.7 And Sylius 1.12, we always can't override endpoint normalization groups for exemple. Defining a custom group just merge groups and not replace it.

Thx

[soyuka]

sylius moves to attributes I think that we'll close this as it got improved a lot since then