WordPress 2.6 – XML-RPC & AtomPub Changes

WordPress 2.6 has been released.

For those of you interested in keeping up with XML-RPC & AtomPub changes in WordPress, here’s what has changed from 2.5.1 to 2.6:

XML-RPC

• The starify function was removed from xmlrpc.php (ticket 6634)
• New method – wp.getUsersBlogs see Blog ID in WordPress and XML-RPC Blog APIs for some background (ticket 7130)
• New field – xmlrpc in blogger.getUsersBlogs (same background as above, ticket 7130)
• New method – wp.getPageTemplates (ticket 6098)
• New field – wp_page_template in the wp.getPage method (ticket 6098)
• New method – wp.getOptions (ticket 7123)
• New method – wp.setOptions (ticket 7123)
• Added support for enclosures in metaWeblog.newPost and metaWeblog.editPost (ticket 3405)
• The <!––more––> tag is no longer embeds newlines before and after in metaWeblog.newPost and metaWeblog.editPost (ticket 6016)
• XML-RPC is disabled by default for new installs of WordPress. Upgrading will NOT disable XML-RPC (ticket 7157)

AtomPub

• If $_SERVER[‘ORIG_PATH_INFO’] is set, we use that instead of $_SERVER[‘PATH_INFO’] in determining the $path value (ticket 6995)
• Fixed problem where using clean URLs (instead of ?p=1 style) would cause wp-app.php/posts requests to return zero posts (ticket 7249)
• AtomPub is disabled by default for new installs of WordPress. Upgrading will NOT disable AtomPub (ticket 7157)

Since the story around disabling XML-RPC & AtomPub by default has gone through a few twists, I’ll re-state the current situation: new installs of WordPress will have XML-RPC and AtomPub access disabled by default, upgrades of WordPress to version 2.6 from previous versions will not have XML-RPC and AtomPub disabled as part of the upgrade process. There is no check box for enabling these services during the install or upgrade. The process for turning them back on are simple check boxes in wp-admin under Settings -> Writing.

On the security front, there are no known security issues in XML-RPC or AtomPub. If you think you’ve discovered one please email the details to security@wordpress.org.

Another point that I’ve seen a few folks bring up is the feeling that this is just the first step in removing XML-RPC and/or AtomPub entirely or that they’ll stop getting new features. These features are not going away and as for continued development and new features, go back and read the top of this post. That said, we can definitely use more people looking at the XML-RPC and AtomPub code.

If you are interested in XML-RPC/AtomPub, please come join us on the wp-xmlrpc email list.