Plugin / BE REST Endpoints

Installation

Install WP REST API v2 and activate it. (https://wordpress.org/plugins/rest-api/)

Upload the BE REST Endpoints plugin to your site, Activate it.

1, 2, 3: You’re done!

Endpoints can be accessed at /wp-json/be/v1/widgets/ and /wp-json/be/v1/sidebars

Lets talk about more interesting stuff now!
To see a particular widget instance or sidebar make a request like this.
‘text-2’ will serve as our example widget ID and ‘sidebar-1’ for our sidebar-id.

Note: text-2 would already have to exist.

For a widget instance:
GET /wp-json/be/v1/widgets/text-2

For a sidebar:
GET /wp-json/be/v1/sidebars/sidebar-1

Cool!!! Now you can make that JavaScript based theme you’ve been wanting to do.
Now for more interesting stuff!

Lets create a widget via the WP REST API! First, there are a couple of query parameters to go over.

widget_base -> is the type of widget you want to create. REQUIRED PARAMETER.

sidebar_id -> is the id of the sidebar you want to place the widget into. REQUIRED PARAMETER.

sidebar_position -> is the numeric position of where you want to place the widget in the sidebar.
sidebar_position does not use array index base numbers instead if you want your widget first use 1.
if you want it second 2. If you want it 10th, use 10. This parameter defaults to 1.
If left empty your widget will automatically default to first in the sidebar.

Now lets do some REST requests.

Create a text widget in sidebar-1:

POST /wp-json/be/v1/widgets/?widget_base=text&sidebar_id=sidebar-1

Create a tag cloud widget in sidebar-1 after our text widget we just made:

POST /wp-json/be/v1/widgets/?widget_base=tag_cloud&sidebar_id=sidebar-1&sidebar_position=2

Now we are cooking. But wait our new awesome widgets are just empty shells 🙁
Now we need to update the actual widget instances. Knowledge of how your widgets work comes in very handy here.

You can do these tests in twenty sixteen because it has multiple sidebars.
If you have a theme that supports multiple sidebars feel free to use that just make sure the sidebar IDs match up.

The instance of the widget is what holds it’s dynamic data. You must look at the code to know the values that need to be updated.
When you create a widget you will notice that you are returned a series of instances.
The parameters within these indexes are used by the instance.

Lets create a calendar widget.

Create calendar widget:

POST /wp-json/be/v1/widgets/?widget_base=calendar&sidebar_id=sidebar-1

We are returned the widget instance. A JSON object that would look like this.

{

    2 - {

        "title": ""

    },

    "_multiwidget": 1

}

So at the numeric index 2 matching calendar-2 we see that this is a simple widget.
It only has the option to have the instance of its title modified. So lets do it.

POST /wp-json/be/v1/widgets/calendar-2?title=Made by REST API

Voila! Are calendar widget has a fancy new title. What if we need to move its position though since we want it at the bottom of our sidebar.

POST /wp-json/be/v1/widgets/calendar-2?sidebar_position=3

There it is at the end of the sidebar. But wait what I really wanted was for it to be in the other sidebar. No problem.

POST /wp-json/be/v1/widgets/calendar-2?sidebar_id=sidebar-2

Done.

So you also combine these as well lets take our text widget we created and move it to the after the calendar in sidebar-2.

POST /wp-json/be/v1/widgets/text-2?title=Moved&text=Yes+it+moved&sidebar_id=sidebar-2&sidebar_position=2

I forgot that I didn’t want to do any of this. Luckily, we have delete as well. Lets clean up.

Delete our widgets:

DELETE wp-json/be/v1/widgets/calendar-2
DELETE wp-json/be/v1/widgets/text-2
DELETE wp-json/be/v1/widgets/tag_cloud-2

The unique IDs for widgets will incrementally increase. If you create three text widgets you would have text-2, text-3, text-4.
So now, you could write an administrative tool that utilizes the widgets and sidebars endpoints!

If you have any questions feel free to contact us at (http://be-webdesign.com/contact/)