Practical REST APIWhy admin-ajax.php should be avoided and how

Aki Björklund CTO,H1

@akibjorklund

Communication between JavaScript and PHP is done with Ajax

Historically that is done in WordPress by calling

/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php

Why admin-ajax.php is bad?

1. Inefficient

2. Not cached

3. No infrastructure like authentication, data

validation, …

4.Ad hoc: messy

WordPress REST API in core from 4.4

There are no built-in endpoints yet

Unless you install the REST API plugin

In many cases no need to write any PHP to do a lot.

But what can you do just with what the core already has?

Example: Comment Reactions

Converting admin-ajax.php to REST API

Before

After

Best practice is to implement what you just saw as a REST Controller. Currently available only with the REST API plugin.

Summary

Use the REST API instead of admin-ajax.php

It’s faster and cleaner

It’s also both easy to implement and migrate to

.

Aki Björklund CTO,H1

@akibjorklund