APIs in PHP: PHP Rest API Crash Course 2026

Are you ready to take your PHP skills to the next level and start building modern, real-world RESTful APIs from scratch?
APIs in PHP: PHP REST API Crash Course 2026 is a hands-on, project-based course designed to help you master API development using native PHP OOP — no frameworks required.

In this course, you’ll learn how to design, build, and secure RESTful APIs that can power web apps, mobile apps, and third-party integrations. You’ll start by understanding the fundamentals of REST architecture, including HTTP methods, request handling, response codes, and JSON data formats. Then you’ll move step-by-step through building a fully functional REST API using pure PHP — with clean code organization, routing, error handling, and security best practices. You’ll learn how to connect your API to a MySQL database using PDO, work with CRUD operations, and return structured JSON responses. Along the way, we’ll also cover Postman Installation, data validation and sanitization, CORS, and create a basic PHP OOP structure for organizing the project. You’ll also learn how to consume external APIs using PHP and get basic definitions about APIs, REST APIs, and more. By the end of this crash course, you’ll have built a professional-level REST API from scratch — ready to integrate with any frontend, mobile app, or third-party service. Whether you’re preparing for a backend developer role or expanding your PHP portfolio, this course gives you the practical API development experience you need for 2026 and beyond.