Element API with multiple categories gives back error 500

Question

This works fine on localhost but crashes on remote Server. I can return one category, but it will crash when I try to display multiple categories. I also tried to save the categories in a variable and return the variable, which again worked on localhost but not on remote Server.

'programevent.json' => [
    'elementType' => ElementType::Entry,
    // 'cache' => true,
    'elementsPerPage' => 999,
    'paginate' => false,
    'limit' => 999,
    'criteria' => ['section' => 'program','type' =>'Event'],
    'transformer' => function(EntryModel $entry) {
        HeaderHelper::setHeader([
            'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' => '*'
        ]);
        $parent = $entry->getParent();

        return [
            'title' => $entry->title,
            'url' => $entry->url,
            'id' => $entry->id,
            'description' => (string) $entry->description,
            'level' => $entry->level,
            'themes' => array_map( function (CategoryModel $category) {
                return [
                    'id' => $category->id,
                    'title' => $category->title
                ];
            }, $entry->themes->find()),
            'kindOfEvent' => array_map( function (CategoryModel $category) {
                return [
                    'id' => $category->id,
                    'title' => $category->title
                ];
            }, $entry->kindOfEvent->find()),
            'languages' => array_map( function (CategoryModel $category) {
                return [
                    'id' => $category->id,
                    'title' => $category->title
                ];
            }, $entry->languages->find()),
            'parent' => $parent ? [
                'title' => $parent->title,
                'number' => $parent->number,
                'url' => $parent->url,
                'shuttleLine' => array_map( function (CategoryModel $category) {
                    return [
                        'title' => $category->title,
                        'color' => $category->color
                    ];
                }, $parent->shuttleLine->find()),
            ] : null,

        ];
    },
],

Answer 1

You may want to try further limiting what you're returning from the API call.

The server may just have a low PHP memory size limit set. There are many answers to fix the PHP memory size bytes exhaustion error. Here's a few:

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/415801/allowed-memory-size-of-33554432-bytes-exhausted-tried-to-allocate-43148176-byte
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/561066/fatal-error-allowed-memory-size-of-134217728-bytes-exhausted-codeigniter-xml

That is a PHP ini setting. If you don't have access to the php.ini file, you have to call ini_set() somewhere in your source code.

This statement sets no memory limit, although I do not recommend using this: ini_set('memory_limit','-1');

Try the lowest amount that you can afford before deploying application, as this can cause server issues if too much memory is allocated to by a bad PHP script.