We already know WordPress is a very good CMS for websites but with the recently introduced JSON REST API in WordPress core, things just got a lot more interesting.
With this API we are now able to use WordPress as a CMS for both a client’s website and his mobile apps which allows for greater simplicity and a one-stop backoffice for all their contents.
I’m just coming off a project now where we used this approach and there are a few key points to share:
Pros
- Uploading Media works well;
- Normal Posts and Pages works well;
- Custom Post Types, Custom taxonomies works well;
- Integrates nicely with WPML as multilingual solution making it perfect for multilingual mobile apps;
Cons
- In every request the mobile app will have to authenticate itself by sending username/password;
- The API is built in such a way to expose as much information about every object as possible so you might find yourself digging through a large object even if you only need one or two fields;
- If we’re talking about an app that will have lots of users you might find yourself overloading your web server unnecessarily.
Even so I believe the positive points still largely payoff. I’m excited as I see this project coming into live in such a short period and the insane value delivered to the client that can now update his apps from a similar backoffice to where I’m writing this post :-)
