data returned from get_post($postId) have different keys than wp-json/wp/v2/posts/{postId}

Question

WordPress Devs. I am new to WordPress and Web development. So far WordPress Rest API v2 works well. I was writing a custom API/route/endpoint for my project using the following function.

 get_post($postId);

Here the keys that are return as a response are mainly ID, post_author, post_date, post_date_gmt, post_content, post_title, post_excerpt, post_status, comment_status.

However, the keys obtain from http://techdevfan.com/wp-json/wp/v2/posts are different from the custom API post object mainly id date, date_gmt, guid, modified, status, link, title.

There is completely no problem in serializing both the response. I just want to know is there any alternative to such problem so that there is no ambiguity in the keys for the two cases other than renaming the keys in $post object of a custom endpoint.

Answer 1

You can set your own keys in the JSON response array. It can be anything. Take a look at this simple example:

add_action( 'rest_api_init', function () {
    register_rest_route( 'shubham', '/get_the_post/', array(
            'methods' => 'GET', 
            'callback' => 'get_posts_by_rest' 
    ) );
});
// Callback function
function get_posts_by_rest( ){
    // Get the post id from the URL and validate it
    if( isset( $_REQUEST['post_id'] ) && filter_var( $_REQUEST['post_id'] , FILTER_VALIDATE_INT ) ) {
        $id = abs( $_REQUEST['post_id'] );
    } else {
        return __('Please enter a post ID.','text-domain');
    }
    // Fetch the post
    $post = get_post( $id );
    // Check if the post exists
    if( $post ) {
        // Now, form our own array
        $data = array();
        $data['id'] = $post->ID;
        $data['date'] = $post->post_date;
        $data['date_gmt'] = $post->post_date_gmt;
        $data['guid'] = $post->guid;
        $data['modified'] = $post->post_modified 
        $data['modified_gmt'] = $post->post_modified_gmt;
        $data['slug'] = $post->post_name;
        $data['status'] = $post->post_status;
        $data['title'] = $post->post_title;
        $data['content'] = $post->post_content;
        $data['excerpt'] = $post->post_excerpt;
        // Add the rest of your content

        // Return the response
        return $data;
    } else {
        return __('Invalid post ID','text-domain');
    }
}

Now by visiting /wp-json/shubham/get_the_post?post_id=123 you will see the same structure as the default wp-json/wp/v2/posts for the post that has an ID of 123.

Answer 2

To add to @jack's answer, coming from the POV of someone that truly dislikes the wordpress core JSON API, I suggest to just not use it if it does not match fully your needs. Writing your own end point is not complex and it ensure that you get the data formatted in exactly the same way you need it, without interfering with the core API which might have other clients which expect the responses to be in a "vanila" form.