GOOP Digital web developer Harley Oliver is in Boston, USA, attending A Day of REST, a conference dedicated to the new WordPress REST API. Here’s Harley’s report from the opening workshops.


We’re working – really! Workshopping at A Day of REST.

Hello from Boston! It’s absolutely freezing (it’s going to be -13 on Saturday…) still hasn’t snowed however.

First day of workshops are done and dusted, here’s an overview of each one:

Authentication with the REST API

Today’s first workshop covered the need for authentication of user logins and security when using the WordPress REST API for future projects.

Three types of authentication were explained, ranging from cookie authentication in the browser (WordPress currently uses this), Basic Auth – a simple jQuery implementation (really not supposed to be used for production environments), and OAuth – a fully secured API key system that requires a lot of work to implement but yields the most secure results in front-end web applications.

This covered a lot of aspects of fetching data out of WordPress via the API, specifically ways to do it securely. However since this technology is so young, some things are still being worked upon.

WooCommerce and the REST API

The second workshop covered using WooCommerce’s REST API, a separate API to the one in core, with endpoints that cover every aspect of a product, order and customer (there’s about 60-80 data fields, it’s nuts). These endpoints make it possible to write web apps that are able to create, update and delete data from WooCommerce, without ever having to log into the dashboard.

A Day of REST swag, including Tibetan socks.

Swag Bag

I got my swag bag early since I could pre check-in at the workshop so I don’t have to do it in the morning 🙂 It has a heap of goodies in it, including some Tibetan socks which have ‘feeling’ and are ‘restful’ on each foot, they’re amazingly comfy and warm. Other than that the usual mountain of stickers, badges and a nice faux leather-covered notepad.

Let's chat about your next project

Contact Us