The API includes a number of global parameters (also called “meta-parameters”) which control how the API handles the request/response handling. These operate at a layer above the actual resources themselves, and are available on all resources.

_fields

A REST resource like a Post contains a large quantity of data: basic information such as content, title, and author ID, but also registered metadata and fields, media information, and links to other resources. Your application may not need all of this information on every request.

To instruct WordPress to return only a subset of the fields in a response, you may use the _fields query parameter. If for example you are building an archive view and only need the ID, title, permalink, author and excerpt for a collection of posts, you can restrict the response to only those properties with this fields query:

/wp/v2/posts?_fields=author,id,excerpt,title,link

You may alternatively provide that same list using query parameter array syntax instead of a comma-separated list:

/wp/v2/posts?_fields[]=author&_fields[]=id&_fields[]=excerpt&_fields[]=title&_fields[]=link

When _fields is provided then WordPress will skip unneeded fields when generating your response object, avoiding potentially expensive internal computation or queries for data you don’t need. This also means the JSON object returned from the REST API will be smaller, requiring less time to download and less time to parse on your client device.

Carefully design your queries to pull in only the needed properties from each resource to make your application faster to use and more efficient to run.

As of WordPress 5.3 the _fields parameter supports nested properties. This can be useful if you have registered many meta keys, permitting you to request the value for only one of the registered meta properties:

?_fields=meta.one-of-many-keys

Only the meta value with the key one-of-many-keys will be returned, and others will be excluded.

You can also request specific deeply-nested properties within a complex meta object:

?_fields=meta.key_name.nested_prop.deeply_nested_prop,meta.key_name.other_nested_prop

_embed

Most resources include links to related resources. For example, a post can link to the parent post, or to comments on the post. To reduce the number of HTTP requests required, clients may wish to fetch a resource as well as the linked resources. The _embed parameter indicates to the server that the response should include these embedded resources.

Embed mode is enabled if the _embed parameter is passed in the query string (GET parameter). This parameter does not require a value (i.e. ?_embed is valid), however can be passed “1” as a value if required by a client library.

As of WordPress 5.4, the resources to embed can be limited by passing a list of link relation names to the _embed parameter. For example, /wp/v2/posts?_embed=author,wp:term will only embed the post’s author and the lists of terms associated with the post.

Resources in embed mode will contain an additional _embedded key next to the _links key containing the linked resources. Only links with the embeddable parameter set to true will be embedded.

In order to use _embed together with _fields, add _embedded as well as _links to the fields, for instance, /wp-json/wp/v2/posts/_embed=author,wp:term&_fields=title,author,_links,_embedded.

For more about linking and embedding, see the Linking and Embedding page.

_method (or X-HTTP-Method-Override header)

Some servers and clients cannot correctly process some HTTP methods that the API makes use of. For example, all deletion requests on resources use the DELETE method, but some clients do not provide the ability to send this method.

To ensure compatibility with these servers and clients, the API supports a method override. This can be passed either via a _method parameter or the X-HTTP-Method-Override header, with the value set to the HTTP method to use.

A POST to /wp-json/wp/v2/posts/42?_method=DELETE would be translated to a DELETE to the wp/v2/posts/42 route.

Similarly, the following POST request would become a DELETE:

POST /wp-json/wp/v2/posts/42 HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
X-HTTP-Method-Override: DELETE

_envelope

Similarly to _method, some servers, clients, and proxies do not support accessing the full response data. The API supports passing an _envelope parameter, which sends all response data in the body, including headers and status code.

Envelope mode is enabled if the _envelope parameter is passed in the query string (GET parameter). This parameter does not require a value (i.e. ?_envelope is valid), but can be passed “1” as a value if required by a client library.

Enveloped responses include a “fake” HTTP 200 response code with no additional headers (apart from Content-Type) that should ensure the response correctly passes through intermediaries.

For example, given the following response to a GET to wp/v2/users/me:

HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Location: http://example.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/42

{
  "id": 42,
  ...
}

The equivalent enveloped response (with a GET to wp/v2/users/me?_envelope) would be:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

{
  "status": 302,
  "headers": {
    "Location": "http://example.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/42"
  },
  "body": {
    "id": 42
  }
}

_jsonp

The API natively supports JSONP responses to allow cross-domain requests for legacy browsers and clients. This parameter takes a JavaScript callback function which will be prepended to the data. This URL can then be loaded via a <script> tag.

The callback function can contain any alphanumeric, _ (underscore), or . (period) character. Callbacks which contain invalid characters will receive a HTTP 400 error response, and the callback will not be called.

For example:

<script>
function receiveData( data ) {
  // Do something with the data here.
  // For demonstration purposes, we'll simply log it.
  console.log( data );
}
</script>
<script src="https://example.com/wp-json/?_jsonp=receiveData"></script>