Simple Example

<?php
use League\Fractal\Manager;
use League\Fractal\Resource\Collection;

// Create a top level instance somewhere
$fractal = new Manager();

// Get data from some sort of source
// Most PHP extensions for SQL engines return everything as a string, historically
// for performance reasons. We will fix this later, but this array represents that.
$books = [
	[
		'id' => '1',
		'title' => 'Hogfather',
		'yr' => '1998',
		'author_name' => 'Philip K Dick',
		'author_email' => 'philip@example.org',
	],
	[
		'id' => '2',
		'title' => 'Game Of Kill Everyone',
		'yr' => '2014',
		'author_name' => 'George R. R. Satan',
		'author_email' => 'george@example.org',
	]
];

// Pass this array (collection) into a resource, which will also have a "Transformer"
// This "Transformer" can be a callback or a new instance of a Transformer object
// We type hint for array, because each item in the $books var is an array
$resource = new Collection($books, function(array $book) {
    return [
        'id'      => (int) $book['id'],
        'title'   => $book['title'],
        'year'    => (int) $book['yr'],
        'author'  => [
        	'name'  => $book['author_name'],
        	'email' => $book['author_email'],
        ],
        'links'   => [
            [
                'rel' => 'self',
                'uri' => '/books/'.$book['id'],
            ]
        ]
    ];
});

// Turn that into a structured array (handy for XML views or auto-YAML converting)
$array = $fractal->createData($resource)->toArray();

// Turn all of that into a JSON string
echo $fractal->createData($resource)->toJson();

// Outputs: {"data":[{"id":1,"title":"Hogfather","year":1998,"author":{"name":"Philip K Dick","email":"philip@example.org"}},{"id":2,"title":"Game Of Kill Everyone","year":2014,"author":{"name":"George R. R. Satan","email":"george@example.org"}}]}