REST API Will Not Be Included WordPress 4.6

This morning, the REST API 2.0 beta 13 was announced. It can be downloaded now from the plugin repository, or GitHub. Some of the biggest changes include that the Content-Disposition header parsing is fixed, and you can use compact links for embedded responses. The full list of changes can be found here.

At the bottom of the post, the REST API team wrote a letter addressing the future of the REST API, which has been uncertain since the announcement that the REST API will not be merged with 4.5.

The letter begins by saying 2.0 will be released in the upcoming months. The release will be completely stable and guarantees backwards compatibility, which means users can move forward without minimal issues and upgrading.

“We originally held the software in beta for a long period to ensure that breaking changes could be rolled in if deemed necessary to move the project forward,” the letter said. “However, the majority of these breaks occurred at the start of the 2.0 lifecycle, and the API is mostly stable at this point.”

As for merge in core, the team has decided not to submit a merge proposal for 4.6, but is looking forward to 4.7.

“We believe endpoints for the main WordPress objects (posts, users, comments, terms, and taxonomies) are not enough to garner the support needed for the proposal to be accepted,” the letter said.

The team is hoping that a stable 2.0 will release will entice more developers to join the project. The workload is becoming too much for the team, and they are looking for more community members to get involved in order to keep up with WordPress.

“Moving forward, the API team sees our role as advisory over the API itself, with the API treated as an integral part of the component rather than maintained by a separate team,” the letter said. “We’re also going to continue to work on our feature plugins (metadata, site/multisite, menus/widgets, and authentication) in parallel, and are looking for help on these as well.”

The more people that join the team, the faster the REST API will be merged in core. To get involved, comment on the announcement, ping the team on the #core-restapi room on Slack, or join the weekly meeting Monday at 4 PDT!