Building an API for everyone is about as hard as it sounds. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwHjiIrQlcg

1. #apistrat

2. Hi, I’m @nacin,
a lead developer of WordPress.

3. WordPress aims to
democratize publishing.

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14. Top U.S. Newspapers by Print Circulation
1. The Wall Street Journal
2. The New York Times
3. USA Today
4. Los Angeles Times
5. New York Daily News
6. New York Post
7. The Washington Post
8. Chicago Sun-Times
9. The Denver Post
10. Chicago Tribune

15. Top U.S. Newspapers by Print Circulation
1. The Wall Street Journal
2. The New York Times
3. USA Today
4. Los Angeles Times
5. New York Daily News
6. New York Post
7. The Washington Post
8. Chicago Sun-Times
9. The Denver Post
10. Chicago Tribune

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29. more than 60 million sites
run WordPress

30. 23.1 percent
of the top 10 million sites
run WordPress
— W3Techs, Sept. 25

31. ubiquity

32. Everyone loves to hate on
PHP, but it’s everywhere,
and that’s what we like.

33. We’re backwards compatible
even across major releases,
which means we’re stuck with
anything we do.

34. The most difficult aspect of
our job is building the best
experience for users.

35. The WordPress dashboard

36. Single page applications

37. Mobile apps

38. WordPress is increasingly
used to build web apps

39. WordPress as a content
management interface

40. Consuming
published content
and structured data

41. We’re more than 12 years
late on the ‘API first’ thing.

42. But now we need an API

43. But now we need an API

44. ‘an API’

45. It’s not an API.
It’s a distributed platform
for serving extensible APIs.

46. WordPress is
a platform for content

47. WordPress is
a platform for developers

48. WordPress is
a platform for APIs

49. One in four sites
run the same software.
Massive potential here.

50. Building an API
for everyone is about
as hard as it sounds.

51. our qualities

52. Flexibility

53. Be able to use the API
to build cool stuff.

54. Performance

55. Efficiency, without real say
in the server or environment.

56. Extensibility

57. Any plugin can change
how the API works.

58. New content types,
new relationships,
new things to discover …

59. Discoverability

60. So, like, hypermedia,
but in practice.

61. User Experience

62. OAuth app registration
is the DMV of the internet.

63. Portability

64. Every site is its own little
house on its own crappy
shared hosting island.

65. Can’t rely on SSL, which
means no OAuth 2.

66. Can’t even rely on the server
to understand HTTP verbs.

67. Centrality

68. Can’t just deploy a bug fix.

69. Each site is its own API,
its own URL, its own version,
its own plugins.

70. Compatibility

71. Different sites could
run different versions,
to say nothing of plugins.

72. Quality

73. We’re “flooding the market”

74. Responsibility

75. With great scale comes
with great responsibility to
not screw it up for everyone.

76. some of our solutions

77. OAuth 1a doesn’t need SSL.
Portability

78. ?_method=PUT
?_method=DELETE
Portability

79. Pass-thru API URLs
on WordPress.com,
WordPress.org?
Centrality

80. JSON HAL for
discoverability.
Discoverability

81. Official client libraries
- work around pain points
- graceful compatibility
- ensures discoverability
Interoperability

82. Plugins have
their own namespace,
with their own version.
1.0/posts
my-plugin/2.0/books
Portability

83. Maybe we can deploy
bug fixes with auto updates.
Stability

84. We are taking the time
to do this right.
The plugin is version 1.0 and will
always be backwards compatible.
You can use it now and give feedback.
Quality

85. Wired & The New York Times
are already using it.

86. If we do this right,
we can help make APIs
more mainstream.
Responsibility

87. WordPress has been a
gateway drug for many
thousands of web developers.

88. Is WordPress the next
gateway drug for APIs?

89. @nacin
nacin@wordpress.org
wp–api.org
make.wordpress.org