The First Half of the REST API Is Officially Added to WordPress Core

A few hours ago, Ryan McCue, one of the lead developers of the WordPress REST API project who recently received guest commit access for WordPress 4.4, committed a patch that adds the REST API infrastructure to WordPress core.

In his commit message, McCue referred to the infrastructure as a baby API:

REST API: Introduce baby API to the world.

Baby API was born at 2.8KLOC on October 8th at 2:30 UTC. API has lots
of growing to do, so wish it the best of luck.

Thanks to everyone who helped along the way:

Props rmccue, rachelbaker, danielbachhuber, joehoyle, drewapicture, adamsilverstein, netweb, tlovett1, shelob9, kadamwhite, pento, westonruter, nikv, tobych, redsweater, alecuf, pollyplummer, hurtige, bpetty, oso96_2000, ericlewis, wonderboymusic, joshkadis, mordauk, jdgrimes, johnbillion, jeremyfelt, thiago-negri, jdolan, pkevan, iseulde, thenbrent, maxcutler, kwight, markoheijnen, phh, natewr, jjeaton, shprink, mattheu, quasel, jmusal, codebykat, hubdotcom, tapsboy, QWp6t, pushred, jaredcobb, justinsainton, japh, matrixik, jorbin, frozzare, codfish, michael-arestad, kellbot, ironpaperweight, simonlampen, alisspers, eliorivero, davidbhayes, JohnDittmar, dimadin, traversal, cmmarslender, Toddses, kokarn, welcher, and ericpedia.

If you’re not familiar with the REST API and its potential impacts on WordPress’ future, I highly recommend reading the following articles.

Excellent Primer on the WordPress REST API Project

The WordPress REST API by Brian Krogsgard

Ryan McCue on Creating The JSON REST API for WordPress

‘The Ultimate Guide To The WordPress REST API,’ An Ebook By Josh Pollock

In the lifespan of an open source project, there are milestone moments. Even though only half of the REST API is in WordPress 4.4, I consider this to be one of those moments.

If all goes well, developers will have access to the complete REST API in WordPress 4.5. I hope you’ll join me in congratulating all of the contributors that have and continue to work on the REST API.