REST Development Console — now open source!

For developers working with the REST API, the browser-based API console is an essential debugging tool. It allows you to test your API queries and interactively explore the results (or errors) that the API returns.

REST API console - exploring results

It also puts the documentation at your fingertips and allows you to build a custom query right from any method’s description.

REST API console - building a query

Like the REST API itself, this tool works for any blog on WordPress.com and for any self-hosted WordPress install using Jetpack.

With the addition of implicit OAuth, we’ve released an open-source version of the API console that you can run yourself.

First, you’ll want to create a WordPress.com application (or modify an existing one) and make sure to set the Javascript Origins option. This should be the fully-qualified URL (including http:// or https:// ) of the site you’ll be running the API console on. To run it locally, just use “http://localhost”.

REST API console - JS origins setting

Then, just head on over to the GitHub repository, clone your own copy, and put your application’s info in the file config.json.

Screen Shot 2014-06-10 at 5.23.59 PM

When you’re running the console locally, you can authenticate by clicking on the box in the lower-right corner.

dev console - auth button

Once you’re linked to a blog, the blog’s ID will be shown in the lower right. You can click on it to change which blog you’re working with.

Important note: When you’ve connected to a blog, the console is hooked up to the live database — any changes you make will be reflected on that blog! You might want to create a test blog if you’re planning to make any requests that will modify content.

The REST API console is located at https://developer.wordpress.com/docs/api/console/.

If you’re using the API, we’d love to hear what you think! Have you used the development console? What’s great (or not so great) about it?


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