Decoupled JSON Content

Contributors: dingo_bastard, mustra
Donate link: https://eightshift.com/
Tags: json, decoupled, json, content, content, json content, react, angular, speed, fast json
Tested up to: 4.9.4
Stable tag: 1.0.0
Requires at least: 4.4
Requires PHP: 5.6
License: GPLv2 or later
License URI: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html

A faster alternative to the default REST API provided by WordPress for the usage by decoupled (headless) WordPress approach

Description

Since the WordPress version 4.4 WordPress added REST API to the core. With the version 4.7 came major improvements that basically allowed WordPress to be used as a unified Model/Controller part of the MVC application. The problem with the default approach to the decoupled WordPress (or headless as some call it) is that accessing the default REST endpoints in WordPress is really slow. The situation gets worse the more plugins you add to your WordPress installation. Hitting the particular endpoint means loading the entire WordPress core. And that is not acceptable if you want to have fast and responsive web applications.

What our approach is using is twofold: We only load the minimum core capabilities, and manually call the necessary files for the necessary task we want to execute. After that, we also store the pulled data in a transient, which is used later on when fetching the data. Transients are great because once you set them up, they won't be called from the database directly, but from the server's memory, making the content fetching even faster.

All the transients can be manually deleted, and we added filters to which you can hook with a third party plugin if you want to add or change something.

We also added a useful custom menu route that can be used to tell the view part of the application what is the menu structure in the WordPress (menu routes are still not part of the WordPress REST API at the time of this plugins release).

Installation

Place decoupled-json-content folder in the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress
Recreate all the endpoints in transient cache in Api Settings > Rebuild Cache

How to use

After installing and activating a plugin you will have API Settings menu. This has two submenus - 'APIs List' which holds a list of available endpoints - the endpoints are general, e.g. for pages it can look something like wp-content/plugins/decoupled-json-content/page/rest-routes/page.php?slug=&type=. In addition to that, every page and post will have additional column in the post/page list which denote if the post/page has an existing cached JSON. Other submenu is called 'Rebuild Cache' which will rebuild all the caches for the pages/posts and custom post types in the database.

Possible issues

The transients are updated on page/post save using save_post hook. It could happen (although we didn't have this issue so far), that other plugins that add some content or data on save_post hook whouldn't have this data exposed in the JSON content. If this happens, just rebuld the cache after post save in the 'Rebuild Cache' menu.

If you had content when installing this plugin you won't have any JSON for this post. In this case you also need to go to the 'Rebuild Cache' menu and resave it.

Hooks

We included several hooks that you can use to extend the functionality of the plugin:

djc_remove_menu_prefix_slash - Remove prefix slash in menu items, accepts boolean. Default is true.
djc_set_menu_posts_slug - Change the page slug for your blog posts. Default is 'blog'
djc_set_general_endpoint - Add new items the settings page general. The return value has to be array with keys: title, url and note(optional).

Items:

djc_set_items_featured_image - Override the items featured image.
djc_set_items_tags - Override the items tags.
djc_set_items_category - Override the items category.
djc_set_items_post_format - Override the items format.
djc_set_items_page_template - Override the items template.
djc_set_items_custom_fields - Override the items custom fields.
djc_set_items_append - Append new data to items. The return value has to be array with key and value.
djc_set_items_allowed_post_types - Set post types you want to use of items. Default is 'post', 'page'. The return value has to be array.
djc_set_items_endpoint - Add new items the settings page items. The return value has to be array with keys: title, url and note(optional).
djc_remove_items_updating - Remove action to update items on change.

List:

djs_set_lists_endpoint_query - set Wp_Query arguments you want to use in list. The return value has to be array with default WP Query arguments. Action-filter value from djs_set_lists_endpoint hook must be prepended to the djs_set_lists_endpoint_query hook. Check details in the example.
djs_set_lists_endpoint - Add new items the settings page list. The return value has to be array with keys: title, action-filter.
djc_remove_lists_updating - Remove action to update list on change.

djs_set_lists_endpoint_query and djs_set_lists_endpoint go in combination.

Example:

function new_enpodint_function( $default ) {
  $default[] = array(
    'title'         => 'New List',
    'action-filter' => 'new_action_filter',
  );

  return $default;
}

add_filter( 'djs_set_lists_endpoint', 'new_enpodint_function' );

function new_args_function() {
  return array(
    'post_type'      => 'page',
    'posts_per_page' => 1,
  );
}

add_filter( 'djs_set_lists_endpoint_query_`new_action_filter`', 'new_args_function' );

Changelog

= 1.0 =

Initial release

Credits

JSON post parser is maintained and sponsored by Infinum.

License

Donate

We don't need your donations. Give it to charity instead. And check out our work at Infinum.

Screenshots

Settings: List of all available endpoints
Settings: Action to rebuild all endpoints to transient
Endpoint: Page json endpoint
Endpoint: Menu json endpoint
Listing: Column added to see if endpoint is cached and available

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infinum / decoupled-json-content

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