Rest – My Shitty Code

WordPress: Creating Gutenberg-Block Compatible Posts Using Rest API

Shitty Author — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 17:27:35 +0000

This article shows how you can dynamically create new WordPress posts using REST API that is compatible with Gutenberg blocks. When done correctly, there is no need to manually convert the content from Classic Editor to Gutenberg Block Editor, or fix incorrectly converted blocks. This is a big time saver when you plan to create many posts using REST API.

This article also assumes you know how to dynamically create a WordPress post using REST API.

For simplicity, the cURL command is used instead of a programming language like PHP or Python.

PROBLEM

Let’s assume we want to create a post with one paragraph and 2 columns, each containing a paragraph too. When creating a similar structure directly using Gutenberg Block Editor, the generated source code like this:

hello

left

right

Using the same structure, we are going to create the same post using REST API instead:

export auth=...
export wp_url=...

content=$(echo '
hello


left


right


' | jq -Rsa .)

curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Basic $auth" \
  -X POST "$wp_url/wp-json/wp/v2/posts" \
  -d "{\"title\":\"test\", \"content\": $content}"

When opening the newly created post in edit mode, the post uses Classic Editor, and not Gutenberg Block Editor.

When attempting to convert the post to Gutenberg blocks…

Some blocks are converted successfully. However, most of the complex or nested blocks are converted to Custom HTML blocks instead. This is because it is not smart enough to know which Gutenberg blocks to use.

This becomes problematic and time-consuming when you have to manually convert each post to use Gutenberg Block Editor, and fix sections that failed to convert to the correct blocks.

SOLUTION

If you know you are going to create future new posts using known Gutenberg blocks (ex: paragraph, column, image, etc), the easiest approach is to manually create a temporary post using Gutenberg Block Editor first.

Using the same example, the paragraph and 2-column structure are manually created using Gutenberg Block Editor.

Now, click on the kebab on the top right, then select Code editor.

This will display the source code in block format, which looks like this:

hello

left

right

Now that we know what the format looks like, we can automate the post creations using REST API.

content=$(echo '

hello





left





right



' | jq -Rsa .)


curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Basic $auth" \
  -X POST "$wp_url/wp-json/wp/v2/posts" \
  -d "{\"title\":\"test\", \"content\": $content}"

Finally, we can create methods/functions with our favorite programming language to generate these blocks, which will be fed to the REST API to create a new WordPress post that is 100% compatible with Gutenberg blocks.

The post WordPress: Creating Gutenberg-Block Compatible Posts Using Rest API appeared first on My Shitty Code.

Rest Template: Could Not Extract Response – No Suitable HttpMessageConverter Found for Response Type [X] and Content Type [application/json;charset=UTF-8]

Shitty Author — Thu, 01 Oct 2015 15:31:56 +0000

PROBLEM

When invoking a web service using RestTemplate:-

restTemplate.getForObject("http://server/api", MyBean[].class));

… the following exception occurs:-

Exception in thread "main" org.springframework.web.client.RestClientException:
Could not extract response: no suitable HttpMessageConverter found for response
type [class [LMyBean;] and content type [application/json;charset=UTF-8]
	at org.springframework.web.client.HttpMessageConverterExtractor.extractData(HttpMessageConverterExtractor.java:110)
	at org.springframework.web.client.RestTemplate.doExecute(RestTemplate.java:572)
	at org.springframework.web.client.RestTemplate.execute(RestTemplate.java:530)
	at org.springframework.web.client.RestTemplate.getForObject(RestTemplate.java:237)

SOLUTION

If the content type is JSON, add the following dependency:-


    com.fasterxml.jackson.core
    jackson-databind
    2.6.0

The post Rest Template: Could Not Extract Response – No Suitable HttpMessageConverter Found for Response Type [X] and Content Type [application/json;charset=UTF-8] appeared first on My Shitty Code.

Java: Invoking Secured Web Service with JSESSIONID

Shitty Author — Sun, 29 Dec 2013 17:04:54 +0000

PROBLEM

I wrote a JSP custom tag that invokes a secured web service within the same application to perform some evaluation. This custom tag is only used in the secured views where the user has successfully authenticated against Spring Security, and they have access to these views. The secured web service is also guarded by Spring Security.

My custom tag implementation looks something like this:-

public int doStartTag() throws JspException {

	...

	HttpClient httpclient = HttpClientBuilder.create().build();

	HttpGet httpGet = new HttpGet(url);

	log.debug("Before executing HTTP Get...");

	HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httpGet);

	int statusCode = response.getStatusLine().getStatusCode();

	log.debug("Status Code: " + statusCode);

	return statusCode == HttpStatus.SC_OK ? EVAL_BODY_INCLUDE : SKIP_BODY;
}

The goal here is… if the response code from the secured web service is a 200 OK, then the custom tag will evaluate its body and include the content. Otherwise, it will hide it.

My first attempt is to test the custom tag with an invalid value so that the secured web service will throw a 400 Bad Request. The hope is the custom tag’s body will not get rendered in the view.

After getting authenticated successfully by Spring Security, the view containing this custom tag gets rendered. However, the response code always return a 200 OK even though I should get a 400 Bad Request from the secured web service.

After poking around, I decided to debug the console log… and this is what I see:-

[DEBUG] [CheckEditAccess] [hasAccess:72] - Before executing HTTP Get...
127.0.0.1 -  -  [29/Dec/2013:10:18:14 -0600] "GET /epic-app/api/request/invalid-key
HTTP/1.1" 302 0
127.0.0.1 -  -  [29/Dec/2013:10:18:14 -0600] "GET /epic-app/;jsessionid=1vlnl6eloabfh12r9x465kvuq
HTTP/1.1" 200 6311
[DEBUG] [CheckEditAccess] [hasAccess:75] - Status Code: 200

As you can see, there are two calls made even though my custom tag only makes one call. The first call is made by the custom tag but the response code is a 302 Found. Then, it gets directed to the next URL that returns a 200 OK.

Why is this happening?

SOLUTION

The problem here is because when the custom tag invokes the secured web service call, it is not done within the same session where the user is already authenticated by Spring Security. Thus, Spring Security prevents the actual call to go through. Instead, Spring Security redirects the request to the login page first (which is located at /epic-app in this case). As a result, the custom tag will receive a 200 OK from the login page instead of the response code from the secured web service.

To fix this, we need to send the session ID with the HTTP Get before executing it:-

public int doStartTag() throws JspException {

	...

	CookieStore cookieStore = new BasicCookieStore();
    BasicClientCookie cookie = new BasicClientCookie("JSESSIONID", pageContext.getSession().getId());
    cookieStore.addCookie(cookie);

	// very important to set the domain, otherwise this will not work!
    cookie.setDomain(request.getServerName());

    cookieStore.addCookie(cookie);

    HttpClient httpclient = HttpClientBuilder.create().setDefaultCookieStore(cookieStore).build();

	HttpGet httpGet = new HttpGet(url);

	log.debug("Before executing HTTP Get...");

	HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httpGet);

	int statusCode = response.getStatusLine().getStatusCode();

	log.debug("Status Code: " + statusCode);

	return statusCode == HttpStatus.SC_OK ? EVAL_BODY_INCLUDE : SKIP_BODY;
}

When I try it again, now I’m getting the intended 400 Bad Request from the secured web service due to input validation error.

[DEBUG] [CheckEditAccess] [hasAccess:72] - Before executing HTTP Get...
127.0.0.1 -  -  [29/Dec/2013:10:45:19 -0600] "GET /epic-app/api/request/invalid-key
HTTP/1.1" 400 0
[DEBUG] [CheckEditAccess] [hasAccess:73] - Status Code: 400

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