I'm having trouble understanding the WordPress.com REST API documentation. The example given for GET /sites/$site/posts/ is

curl 'https://public-api.wordpress.com/rest/v1.1/sites/en.blog.wordpre
+ss.com/posts/?number=2'
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which I couldn't figure out how to make work.

By contrast, the example provided in A Beginners’s Guide to the WordPress REST API is

curl -X GET -i http://the-art-of-autism.com/wp-json/wp/v2/posts
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which does work.

Can you help me reconcile the two (which will hopefully help me interpret the rest of the WordPress REST API documentation)?

Also, do REST API Resources only work on premium WordPress sites? I was able to execute GET /sites/$site/posts/ on the-art-of-autism.com (a premium site) but not on anautismobserver.wordpress.com (a free site). Do you know the reason for this?

I really appreciate your help. You've already saved me a great deal of time and effort (and greatly increased my success chances). Thank you ever so much.

"which I couldn't figure out how to make work."

This works for me, I get back the JSON I'd expect given the endpoint. However this endpoint isn't the one I recommended.

The remainder of this post is questions about WordPress setup/hosting, without looking at the associated documentation I don't know what the answers are.

Using GET /read/feed/$feed_url_or_id I can generate a web page containing the number of followers shown as "subscribers_count".

How do I read this page into a perl script? I tried HTML::TreeBuilder and got the error message:

https://public-api.wordpress.com/rest/v1/read/feed/http%3A%2F%2Fthe-art-of-autism.com%2Ffeed returned application/json not HTML

Should I use WWW::Mechanize::Chrome, JSON, JavaScript, or something else? How do I provide them input from a URL?

Here's a short example using Mojo::UserAgent:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use Mojo::UserAgent;

# your URL

my $url =
'https://public-api.wordpress.com/rest/v1/read/feed/http%3A%2F%2Fthe-a
+rt-of-autism.com%2Ffeed';

# create a Mojo:UserAgent

my $ua = Mojo::UserAgent->new;

# use $ua to get the url and assign the value of 'subscriber_count' in
+ the json
# to avariable, $subscribers

my $subscribers = $ua->get( $url )->result->json->{subscribers_count};

# print the variable to screen

print "Number of subscribers: $subscribers\n";
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Running this returns:

Number of subscribers: 181
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To install the required module, from the command line:

cpanm Mojolicious

(or if you don't have cpanm)

cpan Mojolicious
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To read json data from file, optionally utf8-encoded, into a Perl data structure I do:

use strict;
use warnings;

# use this to enable script working with utf8 strings
use utf8;

# use this in order to print utf8 to console
binmode STDOUT, ":utf8"; 
binmode STDERR, ":utf8"; 

# contains json-encode/decode routines
use JSON;
# contains utf8 encode/decode routines
use Encode;

# where json data is:
my $jsonfile = 'data.json';

# open file with json
my $INP;
die "opening '$jsonfile'" unless open $INP, '<:encoding(UTF-8)', $json
+file;
# slurp file contents
my $contents;
{ local $/ = undef; $contents = Encode::encode 'UTF-8', <$INP> } close
+ $INP;
die "nothing to convert in '$jsonfile'..." unless $contents;
# convert json text to perl data structure
my $perldata = JSON::decode_json $contents;
die "JSON::decode_json() has failed" unless $perldata;

# dump the data for debugging
use Data::Dumper; # only needed if you want to dump a data structure
print Dumper($perldata);

# access element of data
print "image is ".$perldata->{'image'}."\n";
print "description (has unicode) is ".$perldata->{'description'}."\n";
print "meta/links/self is ".$perldata->{'meta'}->{'links'}->{'self'}."
+\n";
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bw, bliako

OP wants to hit an endpoint, they don't have a file.

In response to your short example using Mojo::UserAgent: (which I couldn't figure out how to respond to directly):

I modified your code as follows to read url's from a file:

use strict;
use warnings;
use Mojo::UserAgent;

my $filename = 'urls_Mojo.txt';
open(my $fh, '<:encoding(UTF-8)', $filename)
  or die "Could not open file '$filename' $!";
my $y = 0;              # input row count
while (my $row = <$fh>) {
  $y++;
  print $y;
  print " $row";

my $url = $row;

# create a Mojo:UserAgent

my $ua = Mojo::UserAgent->new;

# use $ua to get the url and assign the value of 'subscriber_count' in
+ the json
# to avariable, $subscribers

my $subscribers = $ua->get( $url )->result->json->{subscribers_count};

# print the variable to screen

print "Number of subscribers: $subscribers\n";
}
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it worked when the file 'urls_Mojo.txt' contained

https://public-api.wordpress.com/rest/v1/read/feed/http%3A%2F%2Fthe-ar
+t-of-autism.com%2Ffeed
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but gave a "Can't use an undefined value as a HASH reference" error when I added a second line to 'urls_Mojo.txt' as follows:

https://public-api.wordpress.com/rest/v1/read/feed/http%3A%2F%2Fthe-ar
+t-of-autism.com%2Ffeed
https://public-api.wordpress.com/rest/v1/read/feed/http%3A%2F%2Fanauti
+smobserver.wordpress.com%2Ffeed
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Can you help me figure out how to apply this script to a list of url's in a file? Thanks.

You have not chomped $row (as can be seen from the printed output when run). If I do that it works fine.

$ diff 11106348_orig.pl 11106348.pl 
12a13
>   chomp $row;
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I presume when you used just one URL in the data file you did not even add the EOL character so it worked as a fluke.

As hippo mentioned, chomp. See also https://perlmaven.com/open-and-read-from-files:

"In this article we see how to do this with core perl, but there are more modern and nicer ways to do this using Path::Tiny to read files."

In addition to that you should consider properly indenting your code to make it easier to follow.

When I type

curl --help
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I get a list of options. Does that mean I have curl installed? (I don't remember installing it.)

If not, please tell me how to install it from the zip file. Thanks.

Sounds like you have curl alright. Re^4: Running JavaScript from within Perl shoes a perl solution, like you asked for ;)

Do you know of a way to indent a script automatically? I currently use Notepad++ and also have Komodo IDE installed (but would happily use another editor that can indent automatically).

perltidy is an IDE/Editor-agnostic way to indent your code in a controlled manner. Any IDE/Editor should be able to hook into it at least on write-to-disk.

I didn't, but a web search found the answer, un surprisingly :) https://stackoverflow.com/questions/412427/auto-indent-in-notepad

When I typed "perltidy" I got the following response:

Can't locate Perl/Tidy.pm in @INC (you may need to install the Perl::T
+idy module)
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When I typed "cpanm Perl::Tidy" in the Command Window the installation failed, with the following in the build.log:

cpanm (App::cpanminus) 1.7044 on perl 5.028001 built for MSWin32-x64-m
+ulti-thread
Work directory is C:\Users\Judy/.cpanm/work/1569000722.23204
You have make C:\Strawberry\c\bin\dmake.exe
You have C:\WINDOWS\system32\curl.exe
Falling back to Archive::Tar 2.30
Searching Perl::Tidy () on cpanmetadb ...
--> Working on Perl::Tidy
Fetching http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/S/SH/SHANCOCK/Perl-Tidy-201909
+15.tar.gz
-> OK
Unpacking Perl-Tidy-20190915.tar.gz
Entering Perl-Tidy-20190915
Checking configure dependencies from META.json
Checking if you have ExtUtils::MakeMaker 6.58 ... Yes (7.34)
Configuring Perl-Tidy-20190915
Running Makefile.PL
Checking if your kit is complete...
Looks good
Generating a dmake-style Makefile
Writing Makefile for Perl::Tidy
Writing MYMETA.yml and MYMETA.json
-> OK
Checking dependencies from MYMETA.json ...
Checking if you have ExtUtils::MakeMaker 0 ... Yes (7.34)
Building and testing Perl-Tidy-20190915
#############################################################
###                                                       ###
###                     DMAKE WARNING                     ###
###                                                       ###
###  Do not use dmake.exe utility as it is no longer      ###
###  part of Strawberry Perl, use gmake.exe instead!      ###
###                                                       ###
###  If you have troubles with CPAN client delete:        ###
###  %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\.cpan\CPAN\MyConfig.pm   ###
###                                                       ###
#############################################################
-> FAIL Installing Perl::Tidy failed. See C:\Users\Judy\.cpanm\work\15
+69000722.23204\build.log for details. Retry with --force to force ins
+tall it.
Expiring 5 work directories.
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Please tell me how to install perltidy. Thanks.

C:\Strawberry\c\bin\dmake.exe

Do you have multiple Perl installations on your machine?

If so, my recommendation is to remove the "old" Perl installation from $ENV{PATH} before trying again to install it.

Do you know of a way to indent a script automatically? I currently use Notepad++ and also have Komodo IDE installed (but would happily use another editor that can indent automatically).

Komodo has brilliant auto-indent features. Open preferences and select "indentation" to check out the global and per language indentation settings like (quoted from komodo docs):

"Smart Indent: Komodo automatically anticipates logical indentation points, based on language cues (such as open braces)."

"Auto-adjust closing braces: Komodo automatically aligns closing braces with corresponding opening braces."

"Show indentation guides: Select to display indentation markers (grey vertical lines). An indentation marker is displayed every time the number of spaces on the left margin equals the value specified in the Number of spaces per indent field."

This works great with prefs > smart editing > enable soft characters ("Enable soft characters turns on language-specific autocompletion for brackets, braces and other delimiters. The highlighted closing character is inserted after the cursor and can be “typed over”.")