With the release of WordPress 4.7 last week came the great news that the long-awaited REST API would be merged into core. We’re pleased to say that in relation to this we’ve now introduced support for this within Property Hive.
What’s The Rest API?
If you’re not familiar with the REST API, it offers a way for developers to build external applications that use the data stored within WordPress. Some examples of where this might be used in relation to an estate agency website are an iPhone or Android app, to build integrations with other systems such as CRM’s, or to build a digital display to show properties in your office windows (we have an add on for this by the way).
Humans can see your properties by simply visiting your website and running a property search, but computers can’t make sense of this. Therefore the REST API offers computers and scripts the data in a way that they can understand.
How Do I Use It?
If you’re running WordPress 4.7 you need to get the application your developing to simply look at the following URL:
your-website.com/wp-json/wp/v2/property
This will produce a list of all the on market properties.
Isn’t it unsafe?
The data that can be accessed via the API is already publicly available on your website. Data from your WordPress site has also always been available via RSS feeds. Therefore we don’t feel we’re giving access to anything that isn’t already available. You might not also know that your posts and pages are already available via the API so all we’re doing is extending this.
Note however that it is possible to disable the REST API should you wish to. Instructions on how to do this can be found at the link below:
http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-disable-json-rest-api-in-wordpress/
We feel this addition offers a wide range of new possibilities when it comes to building new tools for your estate agency. We’d love to know if you make use of this new feature, or if you have any ideas on the types of applications that could be built using it.
