Written by Admin on 2025-05-06

Downloading Files Using the WordPress REST API

The WordPress REST API allows developers to interact with the WordPress database and retrieve data programmatically. In addition to retrieving data, the REST API also allows for downloading files such as images, videos, and documents. In this article, we will discuss how to use the WordPress REST API to download a file.

Getting a File URL

The first step in downloading a file is obtaining its URL. WordPress stores uploaded files in the wp-content/uploads directory. To get the URL of an uploaded file, you can use the wp_get_attachment_url() function along with the attachment ID. Here's an example:

php $file_id = 123; // replace with your attachment ID $file_url = wp_get_attachment_url( $file_id );

In this example, we're using $file_id to specify the attachment ID of the file we want to download. You will need to replace 123 with the actual attachment ID.

Retrieving the File

Now that we have the URL of the file, we can use the REST API to download it. The WordPress REST API provides the /wp/v2/media/{id} endpoint to retrieve media items. We can use this endpoint to download our file by appending the ID of the attachment we want to download to the URL.

Here's an example of how to download the file using the REST API in PHP:

php $file_url = 'https://example.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/123'; // replace with your file URL $file_data = file_get_contents( $file_url );

In this example, we're using $file_url to specify the full URL of the REST API endpoint we want to use. You will need to replace https://example.com with the URL of your WordPress site and 123 with the actual attachment ID.

Next, we're using file_get_contents() to retrieve the contents of the file. This function returns the binary data of the file, which can then be saved to a local file using the file_put_contents() function.

php $file_name = 'my-file.jpg'; // replace with your desired filename file_put_contents( $file_name, $file_data );

In this example, we're using $file_name to specify the desired filename of the downloaded file. You can replace my-file.jpg with any preferred filename.

Conclusion

In this article, we discussed how to use the WordPress REST API to download a file. We first retrieved the URL of the file using the wp_get_attachment_url() function, and then used the REST API to download the file contents using file_get_contents(). Finally, we showed how to save the downloaded file to a local file using file_put_contents().

Using the WordPress REST API to download files provides a flexible solution for developers. With this functionality, applications can automate the downloading of files and make the process of retrieving media items more efficient.