undocumented WordPress.org Plugin API for plugin authors
Did you know you can get info about plugins in WordPress.org’s extend section in json or xml format? Virtually all the info about the plugin is available in machine readable format.
It’s as simple as adding the plugin’s stub name to the end of this url like so:
xml: http://api.wordpress.org/plugins/info/1.0/hello-dolly.xml
json: http://api.wordpress.org/plugins/info/1.0/hello-dolly.json
php serialize: http://api.wordpress.org/plugins/info/1.0/hello-dolly.php
You can request partial info or info on multiple plugins via the full API, which is not documented anywhere except this message from last year:
http://comox.textdrive.com/pipermail/wp-hackers/2009-January/023505.html
PHP code example:
http://wordpress.pastebin.com/raw.php?i=7Ji8rD2P
It was written by DD32 (aka Dion Hulse)
Missing from version 1.0 API are a few finer details like “downloads yesterday” & “last week” but that can always be derived from the graph data like so:
http://wordpress.org/extend/stats/plugin-xml.php?slug=hello-dolly
Graphing was just added to the bbPress.org side but the full API does not appear to be available (yet).
Hi,
Thanks for this information about the WordPress Plugin Info API.
Was relying on a third party plugin to retrieve these information.
Now I can write my own REST plugin to parse this xml info.
Damn happy!
Thanks.
Denzel
January 12, 2011 at 3:02 am
Hi,
Just written a simple snippet on this.
http://snippet.me/wordpress/wordpress-plugin-info-api/
Thanks!
Denzel
January 12, 2011 at 4:24 am
FYI, I wrote the original implementation, but it’s gone through quite a few alterations over time, the extra endpoints weren’t my doing
November 1, 2011 at 8:42 pm