An introduction to the WordPress REST API

Presented at WordCamp Athens 2016.

Created using Marp: https://yhatt.github.io/marp/

Transcript

1. An introduc on to the WordPress REST API Jack Lenox (@jacklenox) WordCamp Athens 2016
2. I Greece!
3. 1. The case for a WordPress REST API
4. What is a REST API?
5. It stands for REpresenta onal State Transfer Applica on Programming Interface
6. Centred around verbs GET POST UPDATE PUT DELETE etc. Different ways to interact with your data
7. Usually responds in XML or JSON format XML (Extensible Markup Language) HTML RSS JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)
8. Why does WordPress need one?
10. MoMA in New York (c. 2009) Their developers wanted to use: WordPress as the CMS Ruby to build the front-end
11. Why? I don't know... but they did
13. WordPress.com API Released in 2012 Available to self-hosted sites via Jetpack Powerful and road-tested Not extensible (unless you work at Automa c!)
15. REST API use cases Non-PHP implementations Mobile devices But most recently...
16. JavaScript OMGBBQ!
18. Internet of things
19. So, what is the WordPress REST API?
22. Merge meline WordPress 4.4 (8 December 2015) Infrastructure merged No endpoints WordPress 4.7 (due 6 December 2016) Endpoints merged!
23. 2. How the WordPress REST API works (aka, what the heck is an endpoint?)
24. End‐what? REST APIs interprets a URL, and return a response Not wildly different to RSS Sample request to fetch some posts: wc-athens.dev/wp-json/wp/v2/posts
25. [ { "id": 1, "date": "2016-11-18T14:08:53", "date_gmt": "2016-11-18T14:08:53", "modified": "2016-11-18T14:08:53", "modified_gmt": "2016-11-18T14:08:53", "slug": "hello-world", "type": "post", "link": "http://wp-rest-api-demo.dev/2016/11/18/hello-wor "title": { "rendered": "Hello world!" }, "content": { "rendered": "<p>Welcome to WordPress. This is your fi "protected": false } } ]
26. More endpoints... Single post: wc-athens.dev/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/1 All pages: wc-athens.dev/wp-json/wp/v2/pages All users: wc-athens.dev/wp-json/wp/v2/users All categories: wc-athens.dev/wp-json/wp/v2/categories
27. Moar verbs! By default, our calls to the REST API are GET requests. But we can do a lot more: POST PUT UPDATE DELETE
28. Authen ca on!
29. A few ways to authen cate Basic Authen ca on Quick and dirty Cookie Authen ca on Good, especially for themes and plugins OAuth 1.0 A bit complicated, but versatile OAuth 2 Less complicated than OAuth 1, but requires HTTPS
30. Brokered Authen ca on The broker apps.wp-api.org Otherwise, it's OAuth 1.0
31. Modifying endpoints
32. 3. Uses for the WordPress REST API
33. Custom wp‐admin interfaces Calypso developer.wordpress.com/calypso/ Happytables www.happytables.com
34. Mobile applica ons WordPress apps for iOS and Android apps.wordpress.com/mobile/ Vienna github.com/joehoyle/vienna
35. Themes Picard github.com/automattic/picard/ Anadama github.com/ryelle/anadama-react/ Foxhound github.com/ryelle/foxhound/
36. Plugins WooCommerce github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce EDD github.com/easydigitaldownloads/Easy-Digital- Downloads Syndication?
37. Enterprise Quartz qz.com Facebook facebookbrand.com Google IO (not WordPress, but...) events.google.com/io2016/
38. Very exci ng mes ahead!
39. Further reading, and any ques ons? The WordPress REST API docs v2.wp-api.org WordPress TV wordpress.tv (search "REST API") javascriptforwp.com
40. Ευχαριστώ πολύ! @jacklenox We're hiring! automa c.com/work‐with‐us/