CMS Dev API

Understand the boundary

A CMS API integration needs to preserve meaning, not just copy paragraphs. Stable identifiers, category memberships, canonical paths, excerpts, media references, and publication dates all affect the resulting site. Decide whether the CMS is the runtime source of truth or an editorial input to a build pipeline. That choice determines how previews, publishing, and outages should behave.

A practical starting project

Write a content adapter that turns a source article into a normalized record with title, slug, body, dates, categories, tags, and media. Preserve source identifiers so later imports can update an item rather than duplicate it. Build a media inventory and explicitly report references that have metadata but no local bytes.

Where integrations go wrong

Do not silently merge similarly named categories or convert an unassigned tag into a featured-post claim. Preserve the source taxonomy first and record editorial changes separately. Strip active scripts from imported body HTML, resolve local media, and validate links after rendering rather than trusting the CMS export to be deployment-ready.

Reference for implementation: WordPress REST API Handbook. Check the official reference for the specific version and environment you plan to use. The exercise above is an engineering starting point, not a live DevAPI.com service.