Porting Wordpress to Laravel - Json API vs Wordpress apis

Question

I am moving my site from Wordpress to Laravel 4 as the site has moved away from being a blog and requires more enterprise and custom functionality.

The blogging capabilities of Wordpress are Awesome, and I would like to continue using Wordpress for this functionality, letting it do what it does best natively.

Justification

I have built wp-plugins to achieve basic levels of required customisations, however I feel as though the site has outgrown wordpress. I really need an MVC solution and a clear separation of concerns for my webapp, without the need to intermix OOP MVC code with wp/procedural code.

I don't mind having 2 logins - wordpress backend & laravel backend...

Obviously, I would like the blog part of the site to look the same as the main part of the site.

I hope to achieve this by keeping installation of Wordpress in a separate folder to the main application Laravel.

From here, I have two options, load up wordpress from within laravel and use the wordpress api or alternatively, expose a json-api or similar of the blog.

This will provide added benefit of allowing me to create an Android / IOS app and share content between main site & mobile devices.

Access WP via wordpress api

config/app.php - Example

...
define('WP_USE_THEMES', false);
require_once(Config::get('app.wp_path') . '/wp-load.php');
wp();
....

this will enable me to access the posts via wordpress api.

Access WP via json-api plugin

Using this plugin, I will be able to create a blog model and query the wordpress posts via curl & json requests.

controllers/BlogController.php - Example

class BlogController extends BaseController {
    public $restful = true;
    public function getIndex() {
        $data['posts'] = Blog::getPosts(1);
        $data['page'] = 1;

        return View::make('blog.index')->with($data);
    }
}

models/Blog.php - Example

public static function getPosts($page = 1)
{
    // get data from specified url via curl
    $url = "http://domain.com/api/get_posts/?page=" . $page;
    $posts = self::curl($url);   
    return $posts;
}

The Question(s)

At present, I like the idea of exposing a json-api because of future extensibility etc. Furthermore, wordpress will only be loaded when required.

I also like the clean and consistent way in which my wp posts can be accessed and displayed within Laravel application.

Any comments / considerations in relation to the following?

Application Performance
Security
Anything that I haven't considered?
Better way of integrating wordpress & laravel?

So I guess you want to use the wordpress backend, and use a (self made) API to get all the posts for displaying on the front end? Wouldn't it just be a lot easier to keep the two separate altogether, and use rewrite rules to redirect the requests to the right index.php? — jberculo
That means that I need to manage 2 different web applications. The Laravel app, and also the WP app. Also, if I decided to build a 3rd mobile app or similar, I would like to be able to distribute content between all three. As such, exposing an API might be the best way to go... in relation to the API, there are 3rd party options: wordpress.org/plugins/json-api or even wordpress.org/plugins/json-rest-api. — Gravy
I once used WP as backend for an Android native app and had no performance issues. I used a custom template that outputed JSON. I also used it as a backend for a JavaScript/HTML SPA and exposed a REST API using tonic (peej.github.io/tonic). The JSON-REST-API plugin on wordpress.org is new to me but might be better then making one from (almost) scratch like I did. The template route I took worked great with Total Cache, that was a plus. — Sergiu Paraschiv

Tim Groeneveld Tim Groeneveld · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-21T07:43:48

You should try to keep WordPress' blogging functionality separate to the rest of your webapp. Unless there is really good justification for integrating the WordPress API into your webapp (I am guessing you only want the blog/comment functionality?) you are going to be duplicating a lot of effort.

What is wrong with having your blog skinned to look like the rest of the website, and simply just installing WordPress into a separate subdomain or just putting it into your public/ folder inside your Laravel app?

If you need a json-api, you could either create a wrapper in your Laravel app around the existing WordPress API (which gets better with every release of WordPress).

As you said, WordPress is amazing with it's blogging capabilities. So why are you trying to replicate them by creating a new interface? That just seems like a waste of valuable time.

There is no need to include WordPress to get access to an API, WordPress ships with an awesome XML-RPC API. The documentation can sometimes be a little lacking, but it is nothing that a little Googlefu or reading the source for the XML server can't solve!