thanks for your explanation and I pretty much have the same
conclusions as yourself, the api is just badly put together, we
should be able to do what you have outlined you expected to work, as
I also expected that to happen to.

It seems it’s just another one of PHP’s many flaws and quirks, that
the programmers who produce the API’s are not professional enough to
understand how to correctly put together an API that is useful to
other people, it seems that people just hack together any old
solution and shovel it into the system, without any regard of
whether it’s a good idea, or whether it’s fully thought through.