Yesterday I published a post on Torque about extending the WordPress REST API & released a beta version of a plugin that extends the REST API for SearchWP queries. This new plugin not only gives a great example of how to extend the API, but frankly I think it is a also a better way to run queries then the default routes.

I’m not criticizing the design of the core REST API and its developers. In fact, the such a super-awesome job on version 2 is why its so easy to add a new endpoint like my SearchWP API add-on plugin does. My new SearchWP add-on plugin lets you run meta queries, taxonomy queries, and date queries, and uses SearchWP’s pre-indexing to improve performance. Because of those capabilities, I think it is a vastly superior way of working then the basic route.

You can check out this plugin and get all the details over on the CalderaWP site. If you’re excited about the REST API — and who isn’t — I really hope you will check out its source, the source for the CalderaWP products and documentation API we’re running on our site and the article on Torque.

My goal here is not to show off how I made some cool API add-ons, though I really do love making custom APIs.

My goal is to get developers to stop looking at the default routes as the totality of the REST API, as if it was just one API. Instead, see it as a tool for building your own APIs. Kind of like how the WP_Query class makes WordPress’ default, front-end behaviors work, but we also use it to create our own queries all the time.