Excellent Primer on the WordPress REST API Project

photo credit: The Poor Man’s Racehorse? – (license)

In the past two years, there’s been a lot of discussion surrounding the WordPress REST API project. If you’re not familiar with it, Brian Krogsgard published a great article that explains what it is, how to get involved, and the possibilities it opens up to developers. Krogsgard believes the REST API is “the most exciting project for the platform since custom post types were introduced in WordPress 2.9 and 3.0.”

While the article does a good job explaining what the API is, I find it to be developer heavy for my understanding. I think it’s a project that I won’t truly understand how great it is until I use products built with it.

For additional information, read our interview from 2013 with Ryan McCue, project lead for the WordPress REST API. In the interview, McCue explains why the API is such a big deal and lists a few practical use cases. There’s also a great presentation from WordCamp San Francisco 2014 by Sam Hotchkiss, that explains how APIs like the REST API are changing the internet.