JSON Content Importer (json-content-importer) free WordPress plugin

Display live data from a JSON-feed / API on your wordpress-site!

Grab JSON from an URL and convert it to HTML on a WordPress-Page

JSON Content Importer – API- and Webservice-Connector – Powerful and Simple JSON-Import Plugin:

• Use a templateengine to display the data from an JSON-Feed.
• Define the url of the JSON-Feed, a template for it and other options like number of displayed items, cachetime etc..
• Cacher with new Option: If a http-API request fails, you can use the maybe cached JSON. Set the radio-button in the plugins settings: what API-problem should be handled how (either a non valid API-http-response or a non JSON-API-response – or both). By default for backwards-compatibility this is switched off. Recommendation: Switch on the plugins-cacher (e. g. some minutes) and select the radiobutton for “If the API-http-answercode is not 200 OR sends invalid JSON: try to use cached JSON” in the plugins options.
• The templateengine inserts the JSON-data in the template.
• You can either use this as wordpress-shortcode inside a page – whereby some extras like urlencoding can be invoked.
• Or use the Gutenberg Mode: Then you don’t have the hassle to put an shortcode together, test it and change it. With a Gutenberg-Block you can test it in realtime and create a shortcode (if you want to stay with shortcodes).

How to start and help

• 2 Steps using this plugin, plus: examples and the PRO-Version.

How to example of using the plugin

Basic structure of the Shortcode:
‘[jsoncontentimporter

• url=”http://…json”
• numberofdisplayeditems=”number: how many items of level 1 should be displayed? display all: leave empty or set -1″
• urlgettimeout=”number: who many seconds for loading url till timeout?”
• basenode=”starting point of datasets, the base-node in the JSON-Feed where the data is”
• oneofthesewordsmustbein=”default empty, if not empty keywords spearated by ‘,’. At least one of these keywords must be in the created text (here: text=code without html-tags)”

• oneofthesewordsmustbeindepth=”default: 1, number: where in the JSON-tree oneofthesewordsmustbein must be?”
  ]
  This is the template:
  Any HTML-Code plus “basenode”-datafields wrapped in “{}”
  {subloop:”basenode_subloop”:”number of subloop-datasets to be displayed”}
  Any HTML-Code plus “basenode_subloop”-datafields wrapped in “{}”. If JSON-data is HTML add “html” flag like “{fieldname:html}”
  {/subloop:”basenode_subloop”}
  [/jsoncontentimporter]’

• templates like “{subloop-array:AAAA:10}{text}{subloop:AAAA.image:10}{id}{/subloop:AAAA.image}{/subloop-array:AAAA}” are possible:
  one is the recursive usage of “subloop-array” and “subloop”.
  the other is “{subloop:AAAA.image:10}” where “AAAA.image” is the path to an object. This is fine for some JSON-data.

Some special add-ons for datafields

• “{street:purejsondata}”: Default-display of a datafield is NOT HTML, but HTML-Tags are converted : use this to use really the pure data from the JSON-Feed
• “{street:html}”: Default-display of a datafield is NOT HTML: “<” etc. are converted to “&amp,lt;”. Add “html” to display the HTML-Code as Code.
• “{street:htmlAndLinefeed2htmlLinefeed}”: Same as “{street:html}” plus “\n”-Linefeeds are converted to HTML-Linebreak
• “{street:ifNotEmptyAddRight:,}”: If datafield “street” is not empty, add “,” right of datafield-value. allowed chars are: “a-zA-Z0-9,;_-:<>/ “
• “{street:html,ifNotEmptyAddRight:extratext}”: you can combine “html” and “ifNotEmptyAdd…” like this
• “{street:ifNotEmptyAdd:,}”: same as “ifNotEmptyAddRight”
• “{street:ifNotEmptyAddLeft:,}”: If datafield “street” is not empty, add “,” left of datafield-value. allowed chars are: “a-zA-Z0-9,;_-:<>/ “
• “{locationname:urlencode}”: Insert the php-urlencoded value of the datafield “locationname”. Needed when building URLs

JSON Content Importer PRO

This free version of “JSON Content Importer” can put together many JSON-Feeds and is flexible with it’s template-engine. But sometimes you might need more:

• application building by creating a searchform and connect it to a JSON-API in the background: pass GET-Variables to use a dynamic JSON-Feed-URL (“talk to API / webservice”)
• much better and more flexible templateengine: twig
• use it as Widget
• create Custom Post Types
• usage on multisite installations
• store Templates independent of pages
• more Shortcode-Parameters
• executing Shortcodes inside a template and
• more features…

If the free version comes to your limit, I’m looking forward that you COMPARE PRO and FREE of the JSON Content Importer.