Nick Batik discusses upcoming changes in WordPress, and introduces Austin WordPress practitioners and endusers familiar with the concepts of the JASON REST APIs to those who unfamiliar with the topic, and help them prepare for a more technical understanding of the subject.

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A Conversation
About the WordPress
JSON REST API
Nick Batik
@nick_batik

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Presenter
Nick Batik
Started in web development in 1994 and have been a
WordPress consultant, and web developer since
2007. A WordPress evangelist, I’ve served as Austin
WordPress Meetup co-organizer since 2010. With my
partner, co-founded Pleiades Publishing Services in
1992 and Hands-On WordPress Training in 2010.
Follow me @nick_batik / @WPATX
Contact me at: handsonwp.com

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WordPress JSON REST API
(and How It Could Change
WordPress Forever)

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What We Will Cover
• Why Change?
• From What? To What?
• What is REST?
• What does that mean to me?

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Why Change?

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Matt Mullenweg talked
about Disruptive
Technology and
WordPress

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Disruptive Technology
a product or service that takes
root initially at the bottom of a
market and then relentlessly
moves up market, eventually
displacing established
competitors.

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Innovate To What?
Innovate From What?

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Popular and polarizing
technologies
Likes vs. Dislikes of 25 most
mentioned technologies
.5 means it is disliked as often as
liked
Source: Stack Overflow 2015
Developer Survey

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Most Dreaded Technology
• Salesforce - 73.2%
• Visual Basic - 72.0%
• WordPress - 68.2%
Source: Stack Overflow 2015 Developer Survey

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Most popular programming
languages
• Javascript - 54.4%
• PHP - 29.7%
Source: Stack Overflow 2015 Developer Survey

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Compensation
• PHP - $77,322
• Javascript - $90,259
• Node.js - $96,534
Source: Stack Overflow 2015 Developer Survey

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Top Tools For Student
Programmers
(Devpost survey of student hack-athons)
1. HTML/CSS
2. Javascript
Source: http://studenthackers.devpost.com/

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Top Tools For Student
Programmers
JavaScript Is Eating The World - Kevin Lacker, co-
founder and chief technology officer of Parse.
• Javascript on the browser
• Javascript on the server ( Node.JS )
• Javascript on the App ( ReactJS / React Native )
Source: http://arc.applause.com/2015/11/06/javascript-is-eating-the-
world/

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Summary
• Javascript is gaining popularity
• PHP is loosing popularity

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This is “Evolutionary”
Innovation.
Where is the
“Disruptive”
Innovation?

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REST

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What is REST?

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The web is built on
an architectural style
called REST
Roy Fielding

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Every Database
Management System in the
world performs some
variation of 4 basic functions
summarized as CRUD

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Those same functions
are baked into the
HTTP Protocol - GET,
PUT, POST, &
DELETE

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The Internet is the worlds
largest single DBMS.
It just hasn’t been fully
implemented.

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Enter WordPress REST
API
It implements the missing
DBMS functions for the
rest of the web.

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What Does This Mean
to Me?

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WordPress becomes a
fully-featured application platform.
By providing an agreed, standardized
programmatic interface between WordPress and
the outside world, the software opens itself up to
every other application and development
environment on earth.

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Cutting the Cord with PHP
The REST API gives every language instant
access to the full range of WordPress’ native
functionality.

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Custom Dashboards
The REST API separates the dashboard from the
WordPress mechanics, allowing a custom theme to
be created for the authenticated side of WordPress
as well.
This means you can create custom dashboards for
targeted niches.

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Custom Dashboards

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Custom Dashboards

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Custom Dashboards
It also means you can create dashboards that look
like Ghost, Joomla, Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, or
whatever.

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Front-End
Editors
When any web page could potentially be a “dashboard”
then any web page could also be an editor. We are seeing
a rapid growth in this area, with examples such as:
• Frontkit
• medium.js
• Dante
• medium-editor
• grande.js
• ZenPen
• Pen

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Winner
• Javascript
programmers
• App developers
• Plugin developers
• MySQL database
programmers
Losers
• PHP programmers
Undecided
• Dashboard
customizers
• Theme developers

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Watch the Austin
WordPress Meetup video