Thoughts on merging the WP REST API plugin

Daniel asked for official feedback from WordPress core committers on the REST API. Here goes. 🙂

I’ve been thinking a lot about this over the last week since last week’s status meeting. And I think I can sum up my thoughts in a nutshell now.

I’m in favor of the REST API team’s proposal to merge the endpoints for the primary objects in WordPress—posts, comments, users, terms—when they’re ready.

When the endpoints for these objects are ready, I would like to see them merged early in a release cycle.

With these primary endpoints in, front end workflows can immediately start to take advantage. This is something groups have been doing for years with custom code already. Getting these groups to use the same structure is valuable.

Exposing all of wp-admin via the REST API is important for the future. I would like to see more discussion from groups planning on creating these interfaces. Determining what the most valuable endpoints are for creating initial versions of these custom admin interfaces could help guide iteration while also allowing progress on those interfaces to begin. Ideally, there should be a wider discussion about what this all means for the default WordPress admin interface.

In general, I think these status meetings should happen more often so that any disparities of opinion are not as surprising to the community at large. A good definition of what “ready” means for each endpoint would be valuable as well.