THE RESTful Future of WordPressHOW THE NEW REST API WILL HELP LEAD WORDPRESS INTO WEB 3.0

About Me

Started off with an interest in art and design due to Mario Paint

Began making “Sprites” and created personal websites about them

Became interested in development due to wanting more power over my art

Taught myself HTML, Flash, and PHP using Front Page and books

Got an A.A.S. in Computer Information Science in 2007

Started developing professionally in 2007

My history with WordPress

First steady non-freelancing job was with Blue Water Technologies

Was introduced to WordPress at v 1.x with Blue Water Technologies

Used WordPress for small projects

Originally favored Joomla! over WordPress

Got serious with WordPress at Lowe Campbell Ewald

Became lead developer for USPS Deliver Magazine, a WordPress site

Began architecting custom WordPress solutions with OnStar

Created custom theme framework “Djehuty” that supported many advanced features.

http://onstarconnections.com

The Evolution of WordPress

Past. Present. Future.

Developers look at WordPress differently than end users. To a developer, WordPress has had 3 rough classifications of the type of software it is.

Past: Publishing/Blogging Software

Present: Content Management System

Future: Application Framework

Past: Blogging

WordPress began as a fork from b2/cafelog during Web 1.0

The need to automate updates was rising towards the end of Web 1.0

“News” software was getting more and more common.

The Web 2.0 “personal” direction began to transform news software into more personalized “web-logs”

During this time there was a distinct difference between “news” “blog” and “cms” software

WordPress began focusing on the (at the time new) web-log aspect of software

Present: CMS

In the beginning CMSs where expensive custom enterprise software

WordPress began getting extremely popular during the rise of open-sourced personal CMSs

The WordPress community recognized the trend and shifted from pure blogging into more advanced content management

Key advanced features were added to the core at the end of 2.x and beginning of 3.x.

Some of those key features where: custom post types, custom taxonomies, blog network, more advanced user and content permissions, rewrite API, etc

This allowed WP to compete with the likes of Joomla! and Drupal

Future: Application Framework

WP is evolving into an application framework with APIs like REST

To a developer, an application framework is very different from a CMS

A CMS allows developers to have end users easily control content

An application framework allows a developer to create any kind of app they please

The web is moving towards a semantic smart-app centric goal known as “Web 3.0”

Once again the WordPress community has recognized the need to adapt and the REST API will play a key role this time around

Technical Demystification

REST. LAMP. MEAN.

Time to get technical. Developers love making words out of acronyms. Speaking about them is second nature to us. I’ll be using 3 terms to talk about key technologies as WordPress transforms for the future. I want to give some background info about them.

REST: REpresentational State Transfer

LAMP: Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (and/or python/perl)

MEAN: MongoDB, ExpressJS, AngularJS, Node.js

REST

REpresentational State Transfer is a fancy way of saying “a really easy way to move data between systems”

REST is abstract and doesn’t really on any particular technology other than the very solid Hyper Text Transfer Protocol the http:// of a URL.

Facebook Graph API is a good away to relate to this concept

http://graph.facebook.com/emalco will allow any app I create to get information about Eric Malcolm

The WordPress API will allow me to get data about a WordPress site as easily as I can get information about Eric from Facebook

REST can return data in many formats but the WordPress REST API does so in the popular JSON format.

LAMP

WordPress was created and depends on a stack called LAMP. A stack basically means separate technologies working together. LAMP is actually four technologies.

Linux: An operating system

Apache: A web server

MySQL: A database server

PHP/PERL/Python: Server scripting languages

MEAN

Mean is the response to the limitations of the technologies that power Web 2.0. It is the new kid on the block and is at the forefront of a revolution on the web.

MongoDB: A JavaScript database engine

ExpressJS: A simple Node.js web server and app framework

AngularJS: An MVC JavaScript app framework

Node.js: A high performance JavaScript runtime

What this means for WordPress?

MEAN is rapidly replacing LAMP as more developers leave LAMP for MEAN

You’ll notice LAMP is mostly about servers where as MEAN is about JavaScript

JavaScript is a frontend technology that allows more power with devices

MEAN is perfect for the direction of Web 3.0 because og its asynchronous event driven i/o architecture

If you guessed that poses a problem for WordPress you guessed right

The WordPress community is well aware of MEAN

Unfortunately rewriting WordPress using MEAN is not as simple as it may seem

The good news is that rewriting WordPress is not necessary, nor smart

The Development Revolution

Web GenerationsTechnically we’re still in Web 2.0. Adoption of Web 3.0 principals grow everyday however and MEAN is better suited for it.

Mobile, the ultimate game changer

Apple changed what we think of as “personal experience” on the web when they announced the iPhone in 2007

The trend of the web being integrated in our daily lives grew much faster than the track it was already on

Consumers now use mobile devices to access the web as much as desktop devices

The WordPress community responded with things like mobile site plugins, responsive themes, HTML5 video integration, and even more recently a revamped mobile friendly admin panel.

These are mostly temporary solutions to a growing divide between servers and our devices however

An increased divide between servers and clients

The mobile explosion is deeper than changing frontend strategies

Mobile changed how we think of the web, and thus what we use to access it, and thus the underlining technologies that power it

LAMP being a synchronous server side technology has a limited ability to interact with devices

MEAN being an asynchronous client side technology with server side support has an unparalleled way to access information about all the devices we use to access the web

Node.js is the power behind most of MEAN

Node.js was created by Ryan Dahl specifically to be a cross-platform abstraction

A need for abstraction

Abstraction is an important concept in computer science

Computer scientists deal with complexity via abstractions

The WordPress REST API is an abstraction layer

Our society is growing to include the web all over the place and we’re expecting this more and more

We now live in a world of smartphones, smart tvs, tablets, etc

Even remotes controls, refrigerators, cars dashboards, or even home heat/cooling system are including interconnectivity to the web

LAMP and WordPress was born in time where the web was something you surfed independently of your everyday experience in a largely 1-way fashion

Those times are over

A look into the new world wide web

A RESTful Future for WordPress

How REST bridges the gap

REST is an abstract communication gateway that doesn’t depend on any platform or stack like LAMP or MEAN

With REST, a developer can write an app using MEAN and it can easily communicate with a WordPress site using REST as a web service

That’s like speaking English and having it automatically translate to Klingon

The WordPress REST API does this by returning JSON data through the simple request of a URL

Developers can not only get data, they can send data to WordPress using any technology they please

Not only can developers send data, they can perform actions like updating a post remotely through the REST API

A RESTful Example Let’s say I want to create web app where users review movies

I want my app to be as fast and seamless as possible

I want scalability because I want to quickly port it to native apps with JS APIs

I want it be a “smart app” that can intelligently figure things out like movie theater location based on a check-in, or movie title based on a picture taken

I want users to manage various content and discussions about the movies

A good strategy then would be to create a web app with MEAN and use WordPress as a web service so that users have an easy and familiar way to manage content

Not only that, I could build multiple apps that connects to the same service

For example, an app that send push messages about user reviews about a local movie theater based on the geo location API information of the user

WordPress REST API makes this possible since it abstracts and connects data

You can use REST now!

Excited about REST in WordPress? I know I am! The REST API is scheduled for integration in WordPress’ core with version 4.0. However, you can use it now as a plugin! Here’s some useful links.

Get the Plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/json-rest-api/

Documentation: http://developer.wordpress.com/docs/api/

Development Feed: http://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/json-api/