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. Team Update Sept. 27 2016
The API team met yesterday on slack for our weekly update, which this week was predominately focused on follow-up from last Thursday’s comprehensive GitHub issues scrub.
Since the previous API team update the group has been making steady progress through the gameplan outlined in that post. To give a quick update on a few key “quirky” issues that had been identified:
Password-Protected Posts
As noted in last week’s dev chat, password-protected posts will be included in collections with their content set to '', and the content can be viewed by passing ?password=XXXXX as a query or GET parameter when querying for a specific post. Query parameters are not an ideal solution: Authorization headers are out because you can’t have multiple authorization schemes in one request; cookies don’t afford enough control to browser clients, and custom headers aren’t respected by caches. See GH issue #2701 for more background, and check out the open pull request to review the specifics of the implementation.
Sticky Posts
After much debate there is now a path forward for handling sticky posts as well. Following this open pull request, sticky posts are included in the /wp/v2/posts collection, but are not given special treatment in terms of ordering—a sticky post will, by default, be displayed ordered by date or whatever orderby has been set for the request. The parameter ?sticky=true may be passed to return only sticky posts; ?sticky=false may be passed to exclude sticky posts from the response.
There is ongoing discussion around how the API could surface posts in the “normal loop The Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each post to be displayed on the current page, and formats it according to how it matches specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code in the Loop will be processed on each post. https://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop. order,” with stickies on top, followed by non-sticky posts. @jorbin will propose a follow-up enhancement Enhancements are simple improvements to WordPress, such as the addition of a hook, a new feature, or an improvement to an existing feature. that could be added in to the API in a later cycle. See GH issue #2210 and associated slack discussion for more commentary.
Meta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. Support
A pull request is open on the API meta endpoints repository to add support for registering meta with the API using the main register_meta function. This PR includes a comprehensive readme explaining how meta handling works. Once merged & reviewed, this functionality will be PR’d against the primary 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/. plugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party repository.
Site Settings (Options) Support
A pull request has merged into the API site endpoints repository which adds support for accessing and manipulating site settings through the API. These endpoints will be PR’d against the core Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. REST API plugin repository this week.
Discussion items for 9/28 dev chat
This project is not quite done yet, and in tomorrow’s dev chat the API team will be looking to the broader WordPress team for input on three priority issues that need a decision:
Upcoming Meetings
Please join us in #core-restapi on chat.wordpress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ for our next two group meetings:
#4-7, #rest-api, #team-update
