Django + WordPress.com REST API =

PROFIT

Jeff Sternberg, VP TechObserver Mediajsternberg@observer.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffsternberg@sternb0t

About me

- Lead engineer @Observer < 1 year- NYC fintech startups ~ 2 years- S&P Capital IQ ~ 10 years- Once and future data scientist- Python brings me joy, SQL makes me happy- First code-for-pay: AppleScript

About Observer- Founded in 1987- We publish an actual

printed newspaper, the weekly New York Observer

- Observer.com- PolitickerNJ.com- CommercialObserver.com

Commercial Observer

- Commercial real estate- Leasing, sales, financing, construction,

infrastructure, industry players, features- Weekly print edition

- Strong since inception 5 years ago- Digital edition

- Needed some love

Before..

After!

Setting the CO Scene

- Small in-house editorial team- Handful of contributors (industry experts)- WordPress codebase, launched years ago* - Not modified much since launch- Hosted on WordPress.com VIP

*I don’t actually know when it was launched

WordWhat?

Though it powers 25% of the internet, I hadn’t ever built anything with WordPress.

I didn’t even know PHP.

WordPress is actually pretty good

- Great WYSIWYG post editor- Easy for editors and writers to learn- Decent media library- Handles most publishing use cases- Lots of useful plugins- Large developer community

Except...

- Rigid data model: everything’s a Post- Not MVC- Plugin spaghetti- Most WP sites are hobbyist/small blogs;

enterprise WP community is fairly small- Locked-down VIP hosting optimized for

high traffic sites like observer.com

Let’s build this in Django.

Ok, maybe just the front end.

Django / WordPress integration

Option 1: Django connects to WordPress db

WordPress content db(mysql)

WordPress web app (php) Django web app (python)

HTTP/HTML HTTP/HTML

TCP (data)

Django / WordPress integration

Option 1: Django connects to WordPress db- sunlightlabs/django-wordpress- agiliq/django-wordpress- Or, roll your own models

- WordPress only has ~12 tables

Django / WordPress integration

Option 2: Coupled REST API

WordPress content dbmysql

WordPress web app (php) Django web app (python)

HTTP/HTML HTTP/HTML

HTTP/REST

Django / WordPress integration

Option 2: Coupled REST API- WordPress.com REST API

- https://developer.wordpress.com/docs/api/- WordPress.org: use WP REST API

- http://v2.wp-api.org/

Django / WordPress integration

Option 3: Decoupled REST API

WordPress content dbmysql

WordPress web app (php) Django web app (python)

HTTP/HTML HTTP/HTML

HTTP/REST

Django db

Django / WordPress integration

Option 3: Decoupled REST API- Same WP REST APIs- Django has its own copy of the content db- Sync content with cron + webhooks

Shared db vs. REST API

Shared db- Faster data access- Django should be

in the same network as WP

- Read/write?

REST API- Django can use

separate hosting / network

- Higher latency- Data serialization /

deserialization

Coupled vs. Decoupled REST API

Coupled- Only 1 copy of the

content db- Site uptime

depends on both Django and WP

Decoupled- Can easily alter /

extend db schema- Data sync scripts

can be tricky- Hosting flexibility

For WordPress.org sites

For WordPress.com sites

WordPress.com REST API

- Sane data model- /v1.1/sites/$site_id/posts- /v1.1/sites/$site_id/tags- etc.

- OAuth2 for private data (e.g. draft posts)- Handy dev console- Good documentation- Some gotchas

Gotchas: WordPress.com REST APIWhitelist custom post types in theme code:/** Allow additional post types in wp.com REST API */function obs_rest_api_post_types( $allowed_post_types ) { $allowed_post_types[] = 'guest-author'; $allowed_post_types[] = 'attachment'; $allowed_post_types[] = 'sponsored-post'; return $allowed_post_types;}add_filter( 'rest_api_allowed_post_types', 'obs_rest_api_post_types' );

Gotchas: WordPress.com REST API

- Custom taxonomies are not supported: the only post terms you can fetch are tags and categories

- So we can use post meta as a workaround...

/* Save coauthors slugs in meta */function obs_save_coauthor_tax_as_meta( $post_id ) { $authors = get_coauthors( $post_id ); $author_str = json_encode( array_map(

function( $a ) { return 'cap-' . $a; }, wp_list_pluck( $authors, 'user_nicename' ) ) );

if ( $author_str ) { update_post_meta( $post_id, 'nyo-cap-slug', $author_str ); } else { delete_post_meta( $post_id, 'nyo-cap-slug' ); }}

add_action( 'save_post', 'obs_save_coauthor_tax_as_meta' );

Decoupled data syncing

- Django command (cron)

- Webhook

$ python manage.py load_wp_api

$ curl -X POST --data "ID=281878" http://co/api/story

import requestsfrom django.conf import settings

def load_posts(site_id, post_type):

api_url = "https://public-api.wordpress.com/rest/v1.1/" \ "sites/{}/posts".format(site_id)

headers = {"Authorization": "Bearer {}".format(settings.WP_API_TOKEN)}

params = {"number": 100, "type": post_type} page = 1

Django command (cron)

def load_posts(site_id, post_type): # ...

# set modified_after to "continue where we left off" latest = Post.objects.filter(post_type=post_type)\ .order_by("-modified")\ .first() if latest: params["modified_after"] = latest.modified.isoformat()

# get first page response = requests.get(api_url, params=params, headers=headers)

Django command (cron) continued

def load_posts(site_id, post_type): # ...

while response.ok and response.text: api_json = response.json() api_posts = api_json.get("posts") for api_post in api_posts: load_wp_post(site_id, api_post) # helper function next_page_handle = api_json.get("meta", {})\ .get("next_page") if next_page_handle: params["page_handle"] = next_page_handle else: break # no more pages left response = requests.get(api_url, params=params, headers=headers)

from rest_framework.views import APIViewfrom rest_framework.response import Response

class LoadAPIStoryView(APIView): def post(self, request): try: wp_id = int(request.POST["ID"]) except: raise Http404("Post does not exist") load_story.after_response(request, wp_id) return Response({"status": "loading wp_id: {}".format(wp_id)})

Webhook

import after_responsefrom django.conf import settingsfrom wordpress.wp_api import load_wp_api_one_post

@after_response.enabledef load_story(request, wp_post_id): # let WP REST API catch up time.sleep(1) try: load_wp_api_one_post(settings.WP_SITE_ID, wp_post_id) except: logger.exception("Fail! wp_post_id=%s", wp_post_id)

Webhook continued

django-wordpress-rest

This code is here:https://github.com/observermedia/django-wordpress-rest

Contact me to contribute if interested!(Or if you find bugs…)

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