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.

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.

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13 responses to “The First Half of the REST API Is Officially Added to WordPress Core”

  1. This is a great news! I was reading this commit like 5 minutes ago, looking forward to WP REST API baked into the core.

    Thank you! everyone who is making this possible. I truly hope that WP REST API will again put WordPress in the spotlight as the best web development tools.

  2. I understand what you can do with the whole thing (I am currently using it in its plugin form on my site) but what can you do with just the first part?

    • Please see this post https://make.wordpress.org/core/2015/09/21/wp-rest-api-merge-proposal/ as it explains that with the Infrastructure part of the API added to WordPress, it enables developers to:

      Merging the infrastructure now would allow third-party code to begin using the API to build upon it, including migrating from existing custom code. It would also help to increase developer confidence in the API (as it represents a commitment by the project towards a REST API).

    • For example, VersionPress’ frontend is built using JavaScript / React, not PHP. It talks to custom WP REST API endpoints and for that, the current “stage 1” is enough. But yes, the API will be a big deal only when “stage 2” merges as well.

  3. That will be good change in WordPress.

    With this REST API, I think we can strongly create app development in WordPress. Currently, users working with Joomla backend for mobile app development but after this changes users will move on WordPress backend to overcome the issue of simplicity backend for app development.

  4. Does this mean that if I use WP REST API plugin and custom endpoints I cant upgrade to wp 4.4?

    In my local install i just got conflicts between plugin API and core API. Since I need the custom endpoints I need to pause upgrades untill 4.5?

    • I expect the plugin will be aware of the core integration (or the other way around) so you can still upgrade to 4.4.

  5. This is great news for Ryan and team of course, but also to those of us who took that leap of faith and baked in our own API calls. I’m going to start testing now, but it looks like minimal rework will be needed to use 4.4 out of the box.

  6. I am so thrilled that this is happening.
    This is fantastic news, thanks to everyone involved! A standardised API in core will simplify a lot of JS logic in plugins and will pave the way for more advanced web apps on top of WordPress.

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