Software Engineering in WordPress, PHP, and Backend Development

Tag: Headless WordPress

Yes, They’re Still Exciting: Headless WordPress Applications in 2023

In r/ProWordPress, OP asked a few questions around Headless WordPress in 2023. One question stood out the most:

Developers who develop headless WordPress sites, how are things going in 2023?

Given all that’s happened within the core WordPress application over the last few years – that is, with the Block Editor and Full Site Editing – it’s not only easy to lose sight this is functionality built into WordPress but there’s likely a portion of people onboarded into WordPress development who do almost nothing with this type of work.

Even with all of the excitement around the new editing tools and how much JavaScript has been introduced into WordPress core, building headless applications with WordPress is still something I find to be one of the most powerful aspects of working with the application.

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How To Build Headless WordPress Applications with a REST API

Since both the REST API and Headless WordPress applications are now mainstream within the WordPress development economy, it’s likely developers have a standard set of tools they like to use when working on these types of projects.

Yours truly not excepted.

And though I’m not making the case that my set of tools should be the standard, I have a set of tools that I’ve found and consistently use when building headless WordPress applications with a REST API.

  • MailHog
  • Insomnia
  • JWT Auth

Though this isn’t in any particular order, I’ll outline them here, how I use them, and explain how they help with login and authentication, testing custom API endpoints, and reviewing emails sent from the local development environments.

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