wordpress-rest-curl/README.md

wordpress-rest-curl

CLI tool for submitting posts to WordPress through its REST API using curl.

Install

WordPress

Application Passwords are built into WordPress core since 5.6 — no plugin needed. Go to Users → Profile → Application Passwords on your site, generate a new password for your user, and note it down. Your site must be served over HTTPS for this to work.

Local shell

Make sure you have curl and jq installed. If you want to enter text in markdown format, install python-markdown2 (pip install markdown2 or your distro's python3-markdown2 package).

Copy config.sh.template to ~/.config/wordpress-rest-curl/config.sh and fill in whatever's shared across sites (TRANSFORM, EDITOR, STATUS, ...). config.sh is always loaded first if it exists — it doesn't need USER, PASSWORD, or SERVER filled in.

If you post to more than one WordPress instance, copy site.sh.template to ~/.config/wordpress-rest-curl/NAME.sh once per site, e.g. blog-example-com.sh and news-example-com.sh, containing just the per-instance bits (USER, PASSWORD, SERVER, and any CATEGORIES/TAGS that differ). Pick one at run time with --site NAME (see Options below) — its values are layered on top of config.sh, overriding only what it sets.

Copy the posting script to e.g. /usr/local/bin/wordpress-post so that you can run it from anywhere.

Usage

• Run the script
• Text editor opens. Type your post, save it.
• Confirm the displayed post by pressing enter.
• Done!

Options

• --site NAME — use ~/.config/wordpress-rest-curl/NAME.sh instead of the default config.sh. Useful when posting to multiple WordPress instances with different credentials.
• --file PATH — use PATH as the post content instead of opening $EDITOR.
• --publish — shortcut for STATUS=publish, posts live immediately.
• --edit POST_ID — update an existing post instead of creating a new one.
• --date DATE — backdate the post to DATE, an ISO 8601 UTC timestamp (e.g. 2026-07-27T10:00:00Z, matching a Gitea commit date) — sent as the post's date_gmt.

Testing

tests/run_tests.sh runs post.sh against a local mock of the WordPress REST API (tests/mock_wp_server.py) — no real WordPress install or network access needed. Requires the same dependencies as the script itself (curl, jq, python3-markdown2).