As you may or may not know, the WordPress JSON REST API is on the horizon for a future version of WordPress. This will be one of the most important and influential additions to WordPress core we may see, especially for those using WordPress as a framework to create web and mobile applications. The inclusion of a standard, easy to use and extendable API for WordPress opens up a myriad of new possibilities on how we build applications with WordPress in the future

But what if you don’t want to wait for inclusion of the WP-API or use the official plugin version of the WP-API, where do you go? Maybe you just have a small bit of information that you would like to access in a JSON format. This could be needed for an AJAX call within your site or to allow a third-party to access some of your data. I will show you a quick way to set up your own endpoint and return your data in JSON format.

Set Up Our Example

For our example, we have the highly critical task of creating a place to store our animated GIFs and provide an easy way to access the links from a third-party. We want to access this by passing in a tag and all we need to get back is the link to the gif and a short description of it. For this, we will create a new CPT with just the featured image and title and a non-hierarchical taxonomy.

function wds_gif_cpt_and_tax() { $cpt_args = array( 'label' => 'GIFs', 'show_ui' => true, 'supports' => array( 'title', 'thumbnail' ), ); register_post_type( 'wds_gif', $cpt_args ); $tax_args = array( 'label' => 'GIF Tags', ); register_taxonomy( 'wds_gif_tag', 'wds_gif', $tax_args ); } add_action( 'init', 'wds_gif_cpt_and_tax' );

Create our Endpoint

Next we will use part of the WordPress rewrite API to properly register a rewrite tag and then add a rewrite rule so we can access this at http://example.com/gifs/tag/ . For this, we use the functions add_rewrite_tag() and add_rewrite_rule(). As you can see, we use a simple regular expression to parse out the tag that is being passed to the endpoint URL. We will be using this tag later to query our GIFs custom post type.

function wds_gif_endpoint() { add_rewrite_tag( '%wds_gif%', '([^&]+)' ); add_rewrite_rule( 'gifs/([^&]+)/?', 'index.php?wds_gif=$matches[1]', 'top' ); } add_action( 'init', 'wds_gif_endpoint' );

Outputting the Data

Now we need to get the data out to our new endpoint so we can have access to those crucial animated GIFs. We are first going to call the $wp_query global so we can properly get find the rewrite tag from our URL. We are checking for the existence of the wds_gif query string, which we rewrote to /gifs/ in our URL. If this doesn’t exist, we will return and bail out of this function. If it works, we set up our array which we will be passing out in JSON format and then run a standard WP_Query loop for our new custom post type. We are going to be running a taxonomy query on this for the tag which was passed after /gifs/ in the URL.

Upon completion of the loop, we will send out the array of data in JSON format using wp_send_json() . This function will encode the array as JSON, echo it, and then run wp_die() to end any other actions that may happen later.

function wds_gif_endpoint_data() { global $wp_query; $gif_tag = $wp_query->get( 'wds_gif' ); if ( ! $gif_tag ) { return; } $gif_data = array(); $args = array( 'post_type' => 'wds_gif', 'posts_per_page' => 100, 'wds_gif_tag' => esc_attr( $gif_tag ), ); $gif_query = new WP_Query( $args ); if ( $gif_query->have_posts() ) : while ( $gif_query->have_posts() ) : $gif_query->the_post(); $img_id = get_post_thumbnail_id(); $img = wp_get_attachment_image_src( $img_id, 'full' ); $gif_data[] = array( 'link' => esc_url( $img[0] ), 'title' => get_the_title(), ); endwhile; wp_reset_postdata(); endif; wp_send_json( $gif_data ); } add_action( 'template_redirect', 'wds_gif_endpoint_data' );

The Results

Now, you can enter your favorite animated GIFs into the WordPress admin under the new Custom Post Type and tag them with some proper keywords and you will be able to use an easy URL to access this data in JSON format by appending the slug of the tag in the URL. For example, you could use http://example.com/gifs/arrested-development to access all of your favorite GIFs of the Bluths. You will be presented with a nice array of JSON data as seen below.

Why Use This Method?

Of course, this isn’t the only method to get your data. As stated above, the WP-API is on the horizon. That would open up a common API to all parts of WordPress that you can build upon and will be the standard in the future. Sometimes, though, you may need some quick and dirty data. This can be used to grant access to a third-party service or when you are making front-end AJAX calls on your own site.

You may ask, why wouldn’t you use admin-ajax.php to make those AJAX calls? When using admin-ajax.php , you are tapping into the WordPress admin and loading code that isn’t necessary. WordPress does not cache requests, for good reason, within wp-admin. If you have a high traffic site, or want the best possible performance, you definitely want to make use of caching whenever possible. Using admin-ajax.php on the front-end could potentially bring down a high traffic site if not used properly. When you create your own endpoint, you can feel free to add in your caching as you see fit.

In Summary

This is an easy method to get some JSON data from your WordPress site. We wrote a small API to our site that can output the data that we need. We used the WP Rewrite API to create an easy to remember URL to access the data and then ran a standard WP_Query and output this in JSON Format. This can be used as a quick method to provide just the data you need and allows for higher performance including the use of caching when using AJAX on the front-end.