How do you create a “virtual” page in WordPress

Question

I'm trying to create a custom API endpoint in WordPress, and I need to redirect requests to a virtual page in the root of WordPress to an actual page that ships with my plug-in. So basically, all requests to the one page are actually routed to the other.

Example:
http://mysite.com/my-api.php => http://mysite.com/wp-content/plugins/my-plugin/my-api.php

The point of this is to make the url for the API endpoint as short as possible (similar to http://mysite.com/xmlrpc.php but to ship the actual API endpoint file with the plug-in rather than requiring the user to move files around in their installation and/or hack core.

My first stab was to add a custom rewrite rule. However, this had two problems.

1. The endpoint always had a trailing slash. It became http://mysite.com/my-api.php/
2. My rewrite rule was only ever partially applied. It wouldn't redirect to wp-content/plugins..., it would redirect to index.php&wp-content/plugins.... This lead to WordPress displaying either a page not found error or just defaulting to the homepage.

Ideas? Suggestions?

Answer 1

There are two types of rewrite rules in WordPress: internal rules (stored in the database and parsed by WP::parse_request()), and external rules (stored in .htaccess and parsed by Apache). You can choose either way, depending on how much of WordPress you need in your called file.

External Rules:

The external rule is the easiest to set up and to follow. It will execute my-api.php in your plugin directory, without loading anything from WordPress.

add_action( 'init', 'wpse9870_init_external' );
function wpse9870_init_external()
{
    global $wp_rewrite;
    $plugin_url = plugins_url( 'my-api.php', __FILE__ );
    $plugin_url = substr( $plugin_url, strlen( home_url() ) + 1 );
    // The pattern is prefixed with '^'
    // The substitution is prefixed with the "home root", at least a '/'
    // This is equivalent to appending it to `non_wp_rules`
    $wp_rewrite->add_external_rule( 'my-api.php$', $plugin_url );
}

Internal Rules:

The internal rule requires some more work: first we add a rewrite rule that adds a query vars, then we make this query var public, and then we need to check for the existence of this query var to pass the control to our plugin file. By the time we do this, the usual WordPress initialization will have happened (we break away right before the regular post query).

add_action( 'init', 'wpse9870_init_internal' );
function wpse9870_init_internal()
{
    add_rewrite_rule( 'my-api.php$', 'index.php?wpse9870_api=1', 'top' );
}

add_filter( 'query_vars', 'wpse9870_query_vars' );
function wpse9870_query_vars( $query_vars )
{
    $query_vars[] = 'wpse9870_api';
    return $query_vars;
}

add_action( 'parse_request', 'wpse9870_parse_request' );
function wpse9870_parse_request( &$wp )
{
    if ( array_key_exists( 'wpse9870_api', $wp->query_vars ) ) {
        include 'my-api.php';
        exit();
    }
    return;
}

Answer 2

This worked for me. I never ever touch the rewrite API, but am always up to push myself in new directions. The following worked on my test server for 3.0 located in a sub folder of localhost. I don't for see any issue if WordPress is installed in web root.

Just drop this code in a plugin and upload the file named "taco-kittens.php" directly in the plugin folder. You will need write a hard flush for your permalinks. I think they say the best time to do this is on plugin activation.

function taco_kitten_rewrite() {
    $url = str_replace( trailingslashit( site_url() ), '', plugins_url( '/taco-kittens.php', __FILE__ ) );
    add_rewrite_rule( 'taco-kittens\\.php$', $url, 'top' );
}
add_action( 'wp_loaded', 'taco_kitten_rewrite' );

Best wishes, -Mike

Answer 3

Any reason not to do something like this instead?

http://mysite.com/?my-api=1

Then just hook your plugin into 'init' and check for that get variable. If it exists, do what your plugin needs to do and die()

Answer 4

I may not be understanding you questions fully, but would a simple shortcode solve your issue?

Steps:

1. Have the client create a page i.e. http://mysite.com/my-api
2. Have the client add a shortcode in that page i.e. [my-api-shortcode]

The new page acts as an API end point and your shortcode sends requests to your plugin code in http://mysite.com/wp-content/plugins/my-plugin/my-api.php

( of course this means that my-api.php would have the shortcode defined )

You can probably automate steps 1 and 2 via the plugin.

Answer 5

I haven't dealt with rewrite that much, yet, so this is probably a little rough, but it seems to work:

function api_rewrite($wp_rewrite) {
    $wp_rewrite->non_wp_rules['my-api\.php'] = 'wp-content/plugins/my-plugin/my-api.php';
    file_put_contents(ABSPATH.'.htaccess', $wp_rewrite->mod_rewrite_rules() );
}

It works if you hook this into 'generate_rewrite_rules', but there must be a better way, as you don't want to rewrite .htaccess on each page load.
Seems like i can't stop editing my own posts...it should probably rather go into you activate callback and reference global $wp_rewrite instead. And then remove the entry from non_wp_rules and output to .htaccess again in you deactivate callback.

And finally, the writing to .htaccess should be a bit more sophisticated, you want to only replace the wordpress section in there.

Answer 6

I had a similar requirement and wanted to create several end-points based on unique slugs that pointed to content generated by the plugin.

Have a look at the source for my plugin: https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/picasa-album-uploader/

The technique I used starts by adding a filter for the_posts to examine the incoming request. If the plugin should handle it, a dummy post is generated and an action is added for template_redirect.

When the template_redirect action is called, it must result in outputting the entire contents of the page to be displayed and exit or it should return with no output generated. See the code in wp_include/template-loader.php and you'll see why.

Answer 7

I'm using another approach which consists in forcing the home page to load a custom title, content and page template.

The solution is very neat since it can be implemented when a user follows a friendly link such as http://example.com/?plugin_page=myfakepage

It is very easy to implement and should allow for unlimited pages.

Code and instructions here: Generate a custom/fake/virtual Wordpress page on the fly

Answer 8

I'm using an approach similar to Xavi Esteve's above, which stopped working due to a WordPress upgrade as far as I could tell in the second half of 2013.

It's documented in great detail here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17960649/wordpress-plugin-generating-virtual-pages-and-using-theme-template

The key part of my approach is using the existing template so the resulting page looks like it's part of the site; I wanted it to be as compatible as possible with all themes, hopefully across WordPress releases. Time will tell if I was right!