Time for another release of the JSON JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML. REST API The REST API is an acronym for the RESTful Application Program Interface (API) that uses HTTP requests to GET, PUT, POST and DELETE data. It is how the front end of an application (think “phone app” or “website”) can communicate with the data store (think “database” or “file system”) https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/.! We’re closing in on midsemester evaluation, so it’s time to get our test on and ensure that everything’s working well. Only small updates to the API An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. itself this week, but also the first introduction of the comment API:
- Add initial comment endpoints to get comments for a post, and get a single comment (#320)
- Return a Post entity when updating a post, rather than wrapping it with useless text (#329)
- Allow filtering the output as well as input. You can now use the
json_dispatch_args filter Filters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. for input as well as the json_serve_request filter for output to serve up alternative formats (e.g. MsgPack, XML (if you’re insane))
- Include a
profile link in the index, to indicate the JSON Schema that the API conforms to. In the future, this will be versioned.
The big part of this week is the introduction of the testing suite and reference client. These are now both available on GitHub and I’d love for you to run them and test out the API. There’s currently one known bug that causes one of the tests to fail, which I’ll be handling in 0.4 due to the large scope of the issue.
I’m planning to continue work on the test suite this week, due to the large scope of the testing suite. Ideally, I’d like to get up around the 90% mark for code coverage (which I’ve done previously on my Requests library), however I’m not sure as to how coverage can be measured in this case, so I’ll also be investigating this. The coming week will also involve creating a Backbone-based sample theme as a proof-of-concept of real world use. In addition, coming up I’ll be consulting with Max Cutler from the mobile team and ensuring that any possible issues are sorted out at this early stage.
As always, I appreciate all and any feedback on the project. This week and the next will be boring for you guys in terms of new features as we approach midsemester review, so I’d love you to get out there and break the API. If you can find problems with it, please file them and let me know so I can work them into the testing suite.
#gsoc, #gsoc2013, #json-api, #rest-api
