Best way to hook a custom url?

Question

Let say I've a custom page with slug created "/products", I want user will be able to POST to a form with url "/products/create" and allow us to render some JSON output.

The "/products/create" page does not actually exist.

I see from [1], the basic approach are

1. Add a rewrite if match my target url, add a custom query var, e.g. is_my_action=1
2. Register the custom query var (is_my_action) via "query_vars" action hook
3. In the parse_request hook check for this query var, and perform my works.

This approach work, but seems a little hackish, are there any potential issue with the above approach?

Are there any better way to add custom virtual url that ?

[1] http://www.coderrr.com/create-an-api-endpoint-in-wordpress/

Answer 1

The approach is pretty much sound, this is how these things work in WordPress.

You might want to use add_rewrite_enpoint() for implementation though, since it compresses multiple steps into on integrated call and fits many use cases well.