WordPress GitHub Release API

A Cloudflare Worker that provides a REST API for WordPress plugin and theme data. Most commonly, this API is used to manage custom plugin and theme updates in WordPress.

All data is fetched from GitHub directly and makes a few assumptions:

• Your WordPress plugin or theme lives in a public or private GitHub repository.
• You've created at least one release on GitHub.
• Your releases contain a .zip artifact that is used for the plugin or theme installation and the file name matches the repo slug.

Prerequisites

• Install Node and NPM.
• Install the Wrangler CLI by running npm i -g @cloudflare/wrangler.
• Run wrangler login to link the Wrangler CLI to your Cloudflare account.

Installation

• Run git clone git@github.com:bluehost/worker-wp-github-release-api.git to clone the repository.
• Run cp wrangler.example.toml wrangler.toml to create your own wrangler.toml file.
• Run wrangler whoami to get your Cloudflare Account ID.
• Set your Cloudflare Account ID as account_id in the wrangler.toml file.
• Set your GitHub username as GITHUB_USER in the wrangler.toml file.
• Run wrangler publish to deploy the Worker to Cloudflare.
• Create a personal access token on GitHub (don't set an expiration and only check the repo permissions).
• Run wrangler secret put GITHUB_TOKEN to set your GitHub token as an environmental secret on Cloudflare.

If you want to configure a custom route via the wrangler.toml file, you will need to provide your Cloudflare Zone ID as zone_id in the wrangler.toml file.

Usage

Once installed, you should be able to access the API at https://wp-github-release-api.<your-subdomain>.workers.dev.

If you prefer to have the API live on a custom domain, follow the steps on setting up a custom route for your Cloudflare Worker.

Requests to the API use the following pattern: /:entity/:vendor:/:package/[:version]/[download].

Plugin Requests

# Get plugin info for latest version
/plugins/:vendor/:package

# Get plugin data for specific version
/plugins/:vendor/:package/:version

# Download latest plugin version
/plugins/:vendor/:package/download

# Download specific plugin version
/plugins/:vendor/:package/:version/download

Theme Requests

# Get theme info for latest version
/themes/:vendor/:package

# Get theme data for specific version
/themes/:vendor/:package/:version

# Download latest theme version
/themes/:vendor/:package/download

# Download specific theme version
/themes/:vendor/:package/:version/download

Required path parameters:

• entity - The entity type. Can be either plugin, plugins, theme or themes.
• vendor - This is the GitHub username or organization name where the repository is located.
• package - This is the slug of the GitHub repository name.

Optional path parameters:

• version - The plugin or theme version number. When absent, the latest version will be returned. When present, the requested version will be returned.
• download - When appended to the URL path, this will trigger a download of the plugin or theme .zip file.

Optional query parameters:

• slug - The folder name of the plugin or theme. Allows you to override your plugin or theme slug if it is different from the package name.
• file - The file containing the WordPress plugin headers. Only required for plugin requests, this allows you to override the main plugin file name if it doesn't match the expected pattern: {package}.php.

Plugin Request Example

Request

/plugins/wpscholar-wp-plugins/shortcode-scrubber

# OR

/plugins/wpscholar-wp-plugins/shortcode-scrubber/1.0.3

In this scenario, the plugin basename is assumed to be shortcode-scrubber/shortcode-scrubber.php. This is derived from the provided slug and file query parameters, if provided. Otherwise, the slug is assumed to match the package name and the file is assumed to match the {package}.php pattern.

/plugins/wpscholar-wp-plugins/shortcode-scrubber?slug=shortcode-scrubber-pro&file=scrubber.php

The example above would result in the following plugin basename: shortcode-scrubber-pro/scrubber.php.

Response

{
  "name": "Shortcode Scrubber",
  "type": "plugin",
  "version": {
    "current": "1.0.3",
    "latest": "1.0.3"
  },
  "description": "A powerful tool for cleaning up shortcodes on your site and confidently managing plugins and themes that use shortcodes.",
  "author": {
    "name": "Micah Wood",
    "url": "https://wpscholar.com"
  },
  "updated": "2020-05-11T22:23:45Z",
  "slug": "shortcode-scrubber",
  "basename": "shortcode-scrubber/shortcode-scrubber.php",
  "url": "https://wpscholar.com/wordpress-plugins/shortcode-scrubber/",
  "download": "https://github.com/wpscholar-wp-plugins/shortcode-scrubber/releases/download/1.0.3/shortcode-scrubber.zip",
  "requires": {
    "wp": "3.2",
    "php": "5.6"
  },
  "tested": {
    "wp": ""
  }
}

Theme Request Example

Request

/themes/wpscholar/block-theme

# OR

/themes/wpscholar/block-theme/1.0

Response

{
  "name": "Block Theme",
  "type": "theme",
  "version": {
    "current": "1.0",
    "latest": "1.0"
  },
  "description": "A block theme experiment",
  "author": {
    "name": "Micah Wood",
    "url": "https://wpscholar.com"
  },
  "updated": "2021-08-06T13:27:23Z",
  "slug": "block-theme",
  "url": "",
  "download": "https://github.com/wpscholar/block-theme/releases/download/1.0/block-theme.zip",
  "requires": {
    "wp": "",
    "php": ""
  },
  "tested": {
    "wp": ""
  }
}

How to Setup Automated Deployments (only required if editing code)

• Install the GitHub CLI. Mac users can simply run brew install gh if Homebrew is installed.
• Fork this repository into your own GitHub account.
• Clone your new repository onto your local machine.
• Run npm install from the project root to install dependencies.
• Create an API Token on Cloudflare using the Cloudflare Workers template.
• Run gh secret set CLOUDFLARE_API_TOKEN to set your Cloudflare API key as a secret on GitHub.
• Run wrangler whoami to get your Cloudflare Account ID.
• Run gh secret set CLOUDFLARE_ACCOUNT_ID to set your Cloudflare Account ID as a secret on GitHub.
• Run gh secret set GH_USER to set your GitHub user as a secret on GitHub.
• Optionally, set your Cloudflare Zone ID by running gh secret set CLOUDFLARE_ZONE_ID.
• Run wrangler publish to deploy the Worker to Cloudflare. This must be done once initially so that the secret we set next has an existing Worker to be applied to.
• Create a personal access token on GitHub (don't set an expiration and only check the repo permissions).
• Run wrangler secret put GITHUB_TOKEN to set your GitHub token as an environmental secret on Cloudflare.

Any push to the master branch on your GitHub repo will trigger the .github/workflows/deploy-cloudflare-worker.yml workflow via GitHub Actions and deploy your Worker to Cloudflare automatically. If you use a different default branch, such as main, simply update the deploy-cloudflare-worker.yml file to reflect the correct branch name.

Additional Notes

• If certain bits of data are missing from the response, it could be that you haven't added all of the necessary file headers.