WordPress has a very handy XML RPC API for connecting to and interacting with WordPress from a remote website or application. But it has some limits and, arguably, flaws. The fist major issue with it that I found is that method names in the API are very often different from method names in the WordPress codebase. So where I might type get_post(10) in a file inside WordPress to get post ID 10, in the standard API I’d have to type getPost in the request. Not a huge issue, but I like consistency.
Second, there are some things that you just can’t do in the standard API. A good example is setting post meta data. The standard WordPress API has no method by which to accomplish this. Using my plugin, every single function typically accessed through WordPress can be accessed through the API. Here’s a quick list of features my plugin currently offers:
- Custom Namespaces
- Selection of which functions are available/not available via the API
- Username/Password authentication
- Access to the entire WordPress codebase’s functions
You can download it here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/extended-xml-rpc-api/
