What is the best way to include an Element's content?

Question

I'm creating a HTTP RESTful API plugin for Craft. In this case, I'm trying to return Elements (based on criteria), and include their content (via $element->getContent()).

By default, if I return just the Elements collection returned by craft()->elements->getCriteria($type)->find(), the content is not included.

I'm also running each Element through a Transformer which uses ModelHelper::packageAttributeValue($value), and converts attributes to their proper PHP type using attribute configs.

I'm not sure the best way to go about including content in my responses dynamically. Suggestions?

Edit:

I've just found out that $element->getContent() returns fields that aren't even associated with that particular element. Weird. Anybody know anything about this? I've instead resorted to using:

$fields = array_map(function (FieldLayoutFieldModel $model) {
    return $model->getField();
}, $element->getFieldLayout()->getFields());

Not sure what's best here.

Answer 1

I've determined what I think to be the best way to dynamically add Element's field content values to my responses.

First off, the reason why field content values are being returned using $element->getContent() regardless of the Element relationship with the fields, is because the content table has field values as columns themselves. So when a Content model is populated, all fields are included. If I setup a field for an Entry, it will appear as a field for a User when using this method.

My solution:

$entries = array();

$results = craft()->elements->getCriteria(ElementType::Entry)->find();

foreach ($results as $model) {
    $entry = array();

    $attributes = $model->getAttributes();

    foreach ($attributes as $name => $value) {
        $entry[$name] = $value; // Do some transformation here (type casting, etc.)
    }

    $content = $model->getContent(); // No extra DB queries here - Model is already populated with content values

    $fields = array_map(function (FieldLayoutFieldModel $model) {
        return $model->getField();
    }, $model->getFieldLayout()->getFields());

    foreach ($fields as $field) {
        $entry[$field->handle] = $content->{$field->handle};
    }

    $entries[] = $entry;
}

return $this->returnJson(array(
    'entries' => $entries,
));

In my particular development, I've separated a lot of the above logic into services, which I'm using like Transformers.

This helps me deliver field content values through my API. I spent hours pouring through source code, and I'm pretty confident this is the best solution based on efficiency, best practices, and similarity with logic concepts found throughout built-in services and models. Let me know what you guys think.