What is wp-rest-playground?

wp-rest-playground is a demonstration project showing how to build a website frontend using WordPress purely as a data source rather than as a traditional website engine, an approach called headless CMS. The frontend is built with React, and it communicates with a locally installed WordPress site through WordPress's built in REST API, a way to request data in a structured format over HTTP. The app provides a browsable blog style site with several features. Any visitor can search posts by keyword from the home page. Navigation categories are pulled directly from the WordPress installation, and posts are filtered by category when you click a category in the nav bar. Individual posts can be read, and approved comments on each post are visible to all visitors. Registered users can log in and submit new comments. Authentication is handled through JWT, or JSON Web Token, a standard method for securely identifying a logged in user without storing session data on the server. Two custom WordPress plugins are included in the repository. These plugins hook into the REST API to expose additional endpoints that the React app relies on for specific data needs not covered by WordPress's default API. To run the project locally, you need a local WordPress installation (the setup guide references LocalWP, a tool for running WordPress on your machine), plus Node.js for the React frontend. Setup involves installing the included plugins into your WordPress instance, configuring a JWT secret key in the WordPress config, and pointing the React app at your local WordPress URL. The project is written in JavaScript.