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manifest / integrations / api-field-shortcode

API Field Shortcode

Wordpress Plugin: Gives you a shortcode that sends a GET request to an API and displays a single field from the JSON (object) response, e.g. [api_field url="https://example.com/api" field="registrations"].

by kmille · github.com/kmille/api-field-shortcode · website

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Install

No release zip yet. The repository archive installs, but the folder name will carry the branch suffix and updates will not flow:

wp plugin install https://github.com/kmille/api-field-shortcode/archive/refs/heads/main.zip
Readme github.com/kmille/api-field-shortcode ↗

(vibecoded but I checked the code)

A small WordPress plugin that adds an [api_field] shortcode: it sends a GET request to a URL you specify, reads one field out of the JSON object response, and prints it as plain text.

[api_field url="https://example.com/api/event-42" field="registrations"]

If the API returns {"registrations": 100}, the shortcode renders 100.

Attributes

Attribute Required Default Description
url yes — Endpoint the plugin sends a GET request to.
field yes — Key to read from the JSON object. Supports dot notation for nested fields, e.g. data.registrations.total.
error no "" Text shown if the request or field extraction fails (network error, expired TLS certificate, non-2xx status, invalid JSON, missing field, etc.).
cache no 300 Cache duration in seconds (via WordPress transients). 0 disables caching.
timeout no 10 HTTP request timeout in seconds.

Why GET-only, and dictionaries only?

This plugin was built for a specific, common case: internal/partner APIs that expect a GET request and return a single JSON object (not a list). That keeps the plugin small and predictable. If you need JSON arrays or HTML templating of multiple fields, see JSON Content Importer, which is a much more general (and heavier) tool for the same broad problem — at the time of writing there was no small, focused plugin that did just "GET + single field + custom error text", which is why this one exists.

Error handling & logging

Every failure (network error, bad status code, invalid JSON, missing field, ...) is written to the standard PHP error log via error_log(), prefixed with [API Field Shortcode], including the URL and field involved.

Does this work in Divi?

Yes. Divi's Text and Code modules render normal WordPress shortcodes, so [api_field ...] behaves identically there, in the block editor, and in the classic editor.

Installation

Option A — Upload as a zip (any WordPress site, no WordPress.org listing needed):

  1. Download this repository as a ZIP (Code → Download ZIP), or download a release ZIP from the Releases page.
  2. In wp-admin, go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
  3. Choose the ZIP and click Install Now, then Activate.

Note: WordPress needs the plugin's .php file directly inside the ZIP's top-level folder (i.e. api-field-shortcode/api-field-shortcode.php), which is how this repository is structured, so downloading the repo ZIP and uploading it as-is works.

Option B — Manual FTP/SFTP:

Copy the api-field-shortcode folder into wp-content/plugins/, then activate it under Plugins.

Option C — WordPress.org plugin directory:

GitHub itself isn't a WordPress "repository" in the sense of auto-updating installs — that only works for plugins hosted on wordpress.org (via its SVN-based directory) or through a third-party updater service (e.g. a GitHub-Updater-style plugin, or a premium tool like a self-hosted update server). If you want one-click installs and update notifications from wp-admin without any extra tooling, you'd submit this plugin to the WordPress.org Plugin Directory instead of (or in addition to) hosting it on GitHub. That involves:

  1. Making sure the plugin follows the Plugin Guidelines (GPL-compatible license, no obfuscated code, sane use of external services, etc.).
  2. Submitting the plugin readme.txt + a ZIP for review.
  3. Once approved, you get an SVN repository (not Git) where trunk/ holds the current code and tags/x.y.z/ holds releases — the readme.txt in this repo is already formatted for that.
  4. From then on, the plugin is installable straight from Plugins → Add New inside any WordPress site, with automatic update notifications.

You can keep developing on GitHub and just mirror releases to the SVN repo (tools like 10up/action-wordpress-plugin-deploy automate that with GitHub Actions) — plenty of plugin authors work that way.

License

GPL-2.0-or-later