Understanding the JSON REST API, XML-RPC, and Remote Publishing to Your WordPress Site

One of the hallmark features of WordPress 4.1 — yes we just got WordPress 4.0, and you’re right, it is really awesome — is likely to be a new way to remotely publish to WordPress: the hallowed “JSON REST API.” But for a lot of people, I know that that sounds like a whole lot of random meaningless letters. So my goal is to explain the current state of remote publishing and control of WordPress sites, how the forthcoming JSON API impacts that, and what it all means.

Understanding the Basics of Remote Publishing

If you’ve never heard the term, “remote publishing” may not make a lot of sense. What people mean when they say “remote publishing” is simply that you’re publishing to a website without actually visiting that website. I might use the Mac app MarsEdit to publish this post to WPShout, rather than using the WordPress admin interface. (I didn’t, but I could.) Or I might use the WordPress iOS or Android apps to do it. Or I might use a collaborative web writing platform for publishing, because my writing team is used to it. (On the last, I don’t know that one exists today that’ll do publish to WordPress, the ill-fated Editorially did.)

The way that WordPress allows and accepts these requests today is though something called the XML-RPC API.

All of these services would be allowing me to publish to this WordPress site not by visiting the pages of the site, but instead making requests to WordPress on my behalf. The way that WordPress allows and accepts these requests today is though something called the XML-RPC API. An API can be thought of, generally, as the public face that a software system shows the world. The XML-RPC API creates the metaphorical buckets to put data, and buttons to change things that WordPress has decided it makes sense to expose to the world. (I wrote a little more about APIs in general over on the Press Up blog a few months ago.)