WordCamp GR 2017 – WP-API: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – J Andrew Scott

History of APIs

• RSS
  • Advantages
    • Fast & reliable
    • Easy to consume
    • Almost no technical footprint
  • Disadvantages
    • Read-only
    • Static content
    • No authentication
    • No user-driven content (i.e. comments, favorites, etc)
• DIY API
  • Advantages
    • Dynamic content
    • User-driven content
    • App & user authentication
    • Roles & permissions based
    • Connected applications
  • Disadvantages
    • DIY OAuth
    • Redundant URI scheme
    • Mediocre performance
    • Large technical footprint
• WP-API
  • Advantages
    • Succinct URI scheme
    • Improved performance
    • Small technical footprint
    • Available in WordPress core
  • Disadvantages
    • Granular transactions
    • No batch uploads
    • Increased number of API calls
    • What once required 2 web servers now required 12-15 servers

WP-API Disadvantage Factors & Solutions

• Number of content types
  • Solution: consolidate endpoints
• Volume of individual API calls
  • Solution: batch processing endpoints
• Frequency of individual API calls
  • Solution: page-level caching

Lessons Learned

• Use standard authentication methods
• Use page-level caching on GET requests
  • Varnish
  • WordPress object caching
• Use custom endpoints
  • for upload of large batches of content
  • for consolidating repetitive API calls