Wordpress REST API (wp-api) 404 Error: Cannot access the WordPress REST API

Question

I have been using the Wordpress REST plugin WP-API for months now while developing locally with XAMPP. I recently migrated my site to an EC2 instance and everything is working fine except I now get a 404 with the following message whenever I try to access any endpoint on the API:

The requested URL /wordpress/wp-json/ was not found on this server

Pretty permalinks are enabled with the following structure http://.../wordpress/sample-post/ which works fine when navigating to a specific post in the browser.

Here are some details about my setup:

• Wordpress 4.4.1
  • Not a Multisite
• WP REST API plugin 2.0-beta9
• Apache 2.2.22
• Ubuntu 12.04.5

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I have gone through SO and the WP Support forums for several hours and am out of ideas. Thank you!

Answer 1

UPDATED NEW WAY

I also faced similar problem in a local project. I used index.php after my project url and it worked.

http://localhost/myproject/index.php/wp-json/wp/v2/posts

If it displays a 404 error then update permalinks first (see "Paged Navigation Doesn't Work" section

If it works, maybe you need to enable mod_rewrite, on ubuntu:

a2enmod rewrite
sudo service apache2 restart

Installation

The REST API is included in WordPress 4.7! Plugins are no longer required, just install the latest version of WordPress and you're ready to go.

If you're before 4.7:

1. Download plugin from here: http://v2.wp-api.org/

2. install and activate it.

Usage

To get all posts:

www.mysite.com/wp-json/wp/v2/posts

For the search functionality, searching for test post looks like this:

/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?filter[s]=test

Answer 2

I had this problem with the latest WordPress 4.7+. In my case the REST API only worked after I changed the permalinks setting to something other than "Plain", which was the default setting for my installation.

Answer 3

On WPEngine and WP 4.9.2 I only had to update permalinks to get fresh, newly installed site to return v2 API calls. What I did:

1. Create site
2. Browse to http://yoursitename.wpengine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/posts
   • get 404
3. Go to admin, settings, permalinks, choose "Post Name"
4. Click "Save Changes"
5. Browse to http://yoursitename.wpengine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/posts
   • success. page displays JSON response

Answer 4

It turned out to be a problem with the Apache configuration.

First, I deleted the .htaccess file in the root wordpress directory.

Next, I navigated to /etc/apache2/sites-enabled and opened 000-default

All of the AllowOverride variables were set to None, which I replaced with All.

That did the trick!

Answer 5

It is the file permission error, apply the following solution:

Edit this file /etc/apache2/apache2.conf Change /var/www/ Permissions from "None" to "All" Restart the apache2 server.

Answer 6

I solved this issue through following steps:

1. Navigate to ..\Apache24\conf\httpd.conf and search for LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so.

2. Enable rewrite module by removing the # mark.

3. Replace all the cases of AllowOverride None to AllowOverride All.

4. Don't forget to restart apache server. :)

Answer 7

I had to manually make a .htaccess, set it to chmod 664, and copy the permalink rules into it.

I also played around with

• Settings > Permalinks
• Manually updating .htaccess via the code at the bottom of the permalinks page after clicked "Save"
• Adding "index.php" as one of the other answers suggests
• Making sure mod rewrite was enabled via a2enmod

Answer 8

I found that mysite/wp-json/ was not working, but mysite/?rest_route=/ was normal. This was breaking some, but not all, the REST API features used on my site.

The answer to this turned out to be a recent change to how I was running my server. This had broken REST API but this was not apparent until later.

I had changed this domain from using Apache to using nginx, and I had not correctly transferred the .htaccess customisations. The quick solution to this problem was therefore to change back to using Apache. This restored the site to working order immediately.

I will be changing this domain back to nginx in the future but when I do, I will test it and be careful not to affect the REST API.

Answer 9

I had moved the WordPress install from a subdirectory to another, so in my case the problem was due to the WordPress config in the .htaccess files. It was trying to redirect every page but the homepage to the old directory. It was just a matter of updating olddir to newdir... This tripped me up more than once so I thought I'd put it here...

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /olddir/
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /olddir/index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

Answer 10

I faced the same problem when I migrated my site from cPanel to Google Cloud Compute Engine Instance; problem was of file permissions which was initially caused due to difference in PHP versions of current deployment from previous deployment.

Here is the fix How to deal with GCP WordPress error "This page isn’t working example.com is currently unable to handle this request. HTTP ERROR 500

Answer 11

I was facing same issue on localhost and I solved this issue with just set RewriteBase Path in .htaccess file which is available at root folder of WordPress project setup.

**Example:** 
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /[folder-name]
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /[folder-name]/index.php [L]
</IfModule>

Answer 12

If you have tried the other solutions on this page and they haven't worked, I had success with checking for additional .htaccess files in the root folder above your public_html folder (or wherever you have installed WordPress).

I found an extra one which may have come from a previous installation or been accidentally moved there - it was giving conflicting instructions to the 'real' .htaccess file. Deleting it fixed the problem for me.

Answer 13

Adding "AllowOverride All" (as hinted by other authors before) to my apache virtual host configuration on my Ubuntu server via SSH did the trick for me:

sudo vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/my-website-name.com.conf

and also (if you use letsencrypt):

sudo vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/my-website-name.com-le-ssl.conf

The files should then look like:

<VirtualHost *:80>
# or <VirtualHost *:443> for the SSL configuration
    
    # [...]
    
    DocumentRoot /var/www/my-website-name.com/public_html

    <Directory "/var/www/my-website-name.com/public_html">
        # this allows .htaccess files (e.g. generated by Wordpress)
        # to overwrite the apache configuration on a directory basis:
        AllowOverride All
    </Directory>
    
    # [...]
    
</VirtualHost>

Don't forget to disable and re-enable the site and reload apache to apply the new configuration:

sudo a2dissite my-website-name.com.conf
sudo a2dissite my-website-name.com-le-ssl.conf
sudo a2ensite my-website-name.com.conf
sudo a2ensite my-website-name.com-le-ssl.conf
sudo service apache2 reload

Answer 14

First you've to Check if the WordPress REST API is enabled or not

The best way to check is to visit this URL: https://yoursite.com/wp-json. If you see some JSON response, REST API is enabled. If it’s showing some error page or returns to home page, REST API is not enabled. Then we've to enable it first.

In this case, you've to Enable Permalinks

1. Visit your page's admin page (Visit https://yoursite.com/wp-json)
2. settings > Permalinks (visit https://yoursite.com/wp-admin/options-permalink.php)
3. Make sure Plain is not selected
4. Choose Post Name (it's a best one)
5. Then click on Save Changes. That will rewrite/repair your .htaccess

Please see the helping screenshots below:

Source

Answer 15

If you website is https://example.wordpress.com (on wordpress) for example, use the below link which will give you the JSON response irrespective of any API settings/Permalinks etc..

• https://public-api.wordpress.com/rest/v1.1/sites/example.wordpress.com/posts

If you want to see all the available endpoints use this - https://developer.wordpress.com/docs/api/console/

Remember to replace **$site** with your domain

Find the latest documentation here - https://developer.wordpress.com/docs/api/