REST API
Brad Williams, Justin Tadlock, John James Jacoby · 2020
Representational State Transfer (REST) is a set of constraints that are useful for creating web services. The WordPress REST API provides a nonvisual window into creating, reading, updating, and deleting anything that happens to be stored inside WordPress. All newer versions of WordPress have the REST API available by default. WordPress has several endpoints available for retrieving all types of data. The two popular REST API clients are Insomnia and Postman. Basic authentication allows data to be accessed not publicly available from the WordPress REST API. For auth credentials to be secure, enhanced authentication options are available when accessing the REST API such as Aplications Passwords and JSON Web Tokens. The REST API can be extended, making it easy to return any custom data one might need. The chapter also explains what exactly an HTTP request is and how it can be used for doing the cumbersome parts.