Routes vs Endpoints

Routes vs Endpoints

Endpoints are functions available through the API. This can be things like retrieving the posts, updating a post, or deleting a comment. Endpoints perform a specific function, taking some number of parameters and returning data to the client.

A route is the “name” you use to access endpoints, used in the URL. A route can have multiple endpoints associated with it, and which is used depends on the HTTP verb.

For example, with the URL https://www.teachmebro.com/post/javascript-asynchronous-programming-and-callbacks:

• The “route” is post/javascript-asynchronous-programming-and-callbacks – The route doesn’t include domain name because domain name is the base path for the API itself.

Routes

Routes in the REST API are represented by URIs. The route itself is what is tacked onto the end of https://ourawesomesite.com/wp-json. The index route for the API is '/' which is why https://ourawesomesite.com/wp-json/ returns all of the available information for the API. All routes should be built onto this route, the wp-json portion can be changed, but in general, it is advised to keep it the same.

We want to make sure that our routes are unique. For instance we could have a route for books like this: /books. Our books route would now live at https://ourawesomesite.com/wp-json/books. However, this is not a good practice as we would end up polluting potential routes for the API. What if another plugin we wanted to register a books route as well? We would be in big trouble in that case, as the two routes would conflict with each other and only one could be used.