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).
WordPress’s dirty little secret
(I don’t have alot of time to write about this right now but I hope to elaborate with more details and examples sometime soon.)
WordPress, even in it’s newest alpha 2.1, has a dirty secret.
It’s “search” feature absolutely sucks. Eggs. It’s really *that* bad.
You may not have the experience from other CMS/blogging software to know what you are missing out on. Or perhaps you don’t have enough posts to care. But you shouldn’t need to rely on an external search engine to let your visitors find stuff, especially considering that external search may miss the most recent posts by at least a week, if not a month.
Sure there are dozens of plugins to try to enhance it. But many won’t work together, at all.
I just did a quick count and I am using two hacks and six plugins to try to make WP do what I want with search and yet it’s a far cry from what I had in Movabletype 2.66 when I jumped that ship.
Gotta run for now but stay tuned for the forthcoming screenshots and gory details of how I feel a blog’s search should work.
_ck_ says... 