WP Rest API upload image

Question

I'm trying to upload image via Wordpress REST api v2. So far all I managed was to create empty entries in wordpress media library. Meaning they have image names, but no actual image.

POST Request:

http://localhost/wordpress/wp-json/wp/v2/media

Authorization: Basic d29yZHByZXNzOndvcmRwcmVzcw==
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Disposition: attachment;filename=map2.jpg

{
  "source_url" : "file:///C:/Users/x/Desktop/map2.jpg"
}

Response:

{
  "id": 127,
  "date": "2016-05-25T08:43:30",
  "date_gmt": "2016-05-25T08:43:30",
  "guid": {
    "rendered": "http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/map2-3.jpg",
    "raw": "http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/map2-3.jpg"
  },
  "modified": "2016-05-25T08:43:30",
  "modified_gmt": "2016-05-25T08:43:30",
  "password": "",
  "slug": "map2-3",
  "status": "inherit",
  "type": "attachment",
  "link": "http://localhost/wordpress/map2-3/",
  "title": {
    "raw": "map2-3",
    "rendered": "map2-3"
  },
  "author": 1,
  "comment_status": "open",
  "ping_status": "closed",
  "alt_text": "",
  "caption": "",
  "description": "",
  "media_type": "image",
  "mime_type": "image/jpeg",
  "media_details": {},
  "post": null,
  "source_url": "http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/map2-3.jpg",
  "_links": {
    "self": [
      {
        "href": "http://localhost/wordpress/wp-json/wp/v2/media/127"
      }
    ],
    "collection": [
      {
        "href": "http://localhost/wordpress/wp-json/wp/v2/media"
      }
    ],
    "about": [
      {
        "href": "http://localhost/wordpress/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"
      }
    ],
    "author": [
      {
        "embeddable": true,
        "href": "http://localhost/wordpress/wp-json/wp/v2/users/1"
      }
    ],
    "replies": [
      {
        "embeddable": true,
        "href": "http://localhost/wordpress/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=127"
      }
    ]
  }
}

I get no errors, everything's seem to be working, except response->post and response->media_details is either null or empty. Ofcourse image itself is not uploaded.

Based on this GitHub WP-API Adding Media ticket, I should send 2 requests. First POST request should return data with post object. I would send this post object via PUT method, and image should be uploaded...since I have no post object, this is not possible.

Any ideas what am I doing wrong?

score 20 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 15 '16 at 13:34

20

Sideloading images is not supported by the wordpress api so you will have to do some changes.

First, your content-type should be image/jpeg and not application/json, remember that content-type is supposed to reflect the data that you are passing and the POST media request expects an image.

Another change you have to make to accommodate the content-type is the way that you are passing the data. Instead of sending it with the source_url parameter, try passing it as a binary file.

One last thing I would mention is that the wp/v2 calls return 3XX status on a few occasions. It would be useful to follow those redirects and redo those requests to those new urls.

I had some issues passing JPEG images but PNG images have worked well. Here is a curl example that I use to upload png media:

curl --request POST \
--url http://www.yoursite.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media \
--header "cache-control: no-cache" \
--header "content-disposition: attachment; filename=tmp" \
--header "authorization: Basic d29yZHByZXNzOndvcmRwcmVzcw==" \
--header "content-type: image/png" \
--data-binary "@/home/web/tmp.png" \
--location

answered Jul 15 '16 at 13:34

ren.rocks

772
1
7
22

1

Thanks. Your callout about the content-type helped me fix an error I was experiencing. – HMartch Mar 10 '17 at 21:32
2

@rtrigoso I can upload the file but WordPress does not recognize it as an image. I can see that the file size is some 300KBs. What might be wrong? PS: I am sending the file as base64 encoded data string. – Samarth Agarwal Jul 03 '17 at 19:51
1

I actually require two calls. One for the Creation & Upload of the image; other for Adding the `-d`ata fields. None of those calls can make the image as Featured in the given `"post":"$post_id"`, presumably requiring a third call... – Brethlosze Jan 19 '19 at 07:05
@rtrigoso i tried with same header as you written in your post and pass binary data but unable to create media. Done through Postman. Its only return list of all media – Kandy Jun 24 '20 at 06:35

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 24 '20 at 10:02

For anyone looking for a JS solution, here's how I made it work using Axios. I will skip authorization implementations, as there are a few options around (oAuth, JWT, Basic).

const fs = require('fs');
const axios = require('axios');

axios({
  url: 'http(s)://{your-wp-domain}/wp-json/wp/v2/media',
  method: 'POST',
  headers: {
    'Content-Disposition':'attachment; filename="file.jpg"',
     Authorization: {your-authorization-method},
    'Content-Type':'image/jpeg'
    },
    data: fs.readFileSync('path/to/file.jpg', (err, data) => {
      if (err) {
        console.log(err);
      }
    });
})
 .then(res => {
   console.log(res.data);
 })
 .catch(err => {
   console.log(err);
 });

I don't think this will work, as `fs` is not available in browser. — Jitesh Dhamaniya, Mar 21 '22 at 13:43

score 5 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 15 '16 at 07:32

My working answer using PHP cUrl

<?php

$curl = curl_init();

$data = file_get_contents('C:\test.png');

curl_setopt_array($curl, array(
  CURLOPT_URL => "http://woo.dev/wp-json/wp/v2/media",
  CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
  CURLOPT_ENCODING => "",
  CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10,
  CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 30,
  CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1,
  CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => "POST",
  CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => array(
    "authorization: Basic XxxxxxxXxxxxXx=",
    "cache-control: no-cache",
    "content-disposition: attachment; filename=test.png",
    "content-type: image/png",
  ),
  CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => $data,
));

$response = curl_exec($curl);
$err = curl_error($curl);

curl_close($curl);

if ($err) {
  echo "cURL Error #:" . $err;
} else {
  echo $response;
}

Can you add the response that you get after execute this request ? — Jeff, Jul 02 '17 at 23:08
Thumbs up for the curl_setopt_array. Never seen it before and wasn't quite aware of it. — MarkSkayff, Aug 27 '18 at 21:19

score 4 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 05 '20 at 02:24

At january 2020 using wordpress 5.3.2 with nginx the solution that work for me is:

 function uploadFile($token, $archivo) {
    $file = file_get_contents( $archivo );
    $mime = mime_content_type( $archivo );
    $url =  BASEAPI. 'wp-json/wp/v2/media';
    $ch = curl_init();

    curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url );
    curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1 );
    curl_setopt($ch,  CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE);
    curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $file );
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_BINARYTRANSFER, TRUE);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, true);
    curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, [
        'Content-Type: '.$mime,
        'Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.basename($archivo).'"',
        'Authorization: Bearer ' .$token,
    ] );
    $result = curl_exec( $ch );
    curl_close( $ch );
    print_r( json_decode( $result ) );
}

The token is the Authorization JWT token and $archivo is the path to file.

CURLOPT_BINARYTRANSFER deprecated – Harry Bosh Aug 05 '21 at 01:32 — Harry Bosh, Aug 05 '21 at 01:32

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Jan 07 '20 at 10:07

Here you can use this code snippet. This works for me using Wordpress API REST

<?php
//Add this to your function.php
function upload_image( $imageID, $login ) {
  $request_url = 'https://DOMAINNAME.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media'; //change the domainname
    $image_file_path = get_attached_file($imageID); //change this to your file meda path if your not throwing media file to other server
  $image = file_get_contents( $image_file_path );
    $mime = mime_content_type( $image_file_path );

  $api_media_response = wp_remote_post( $request_url, array(
        'headers' => array(
            'Authorization' => 'Basic ' . base64_encode( $login ), //login format USERNAME:PASSWORD
            'Content-Disposition' => 'attachment; filename='.basename($image_file_path).'',
            'Content-Type' => $mime
        ),
        'body' => $image
    ) );

  //this function return wp_remote_post
  // more info => https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/wp_remote_post/
}

Can you please explain the usage ? – tkamath99 Oct 09 '20 at 13:48 — tkamath99, Oct 09 '20 at 13:48

score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 22 '19 at 14:39

After trying to get the image upload running with wp_remote_post (don´t wanna use curl for several reasons) i came up with the following working solution:

// Upload image to wordpress media library

$file = @fopen( 'image.jpg', 'r' );
$file_size = filesize( 'image.jpg' );
$file_data = fread( $file, $file_size );
$args = array(
    'headers'     => array(
        'Authorization' => 'Basic ' . base64_encode( 'USERNAME:PASSWORD' ),
        'accept'        => 'application/json', // The API returns JSON
        'content-type'  => 'application/binary', // Set content type to binary
        'Content-Disposition' => 'attachment; filename=nameoffileonserver.jpg'
    ),
    'body'        => $file_data
    );



$api_response = wp_remote_post( 'http://myserver.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media', $args);

Clean, simple and straightforward - can be used for other languages such as C# with some modifications. — Robert Rademacher, Jan 01 '22 at 16:13

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Aug 13 '22 at 15:23

if you want to upload a image to WordPress rest API using nuxtjs or vuejs you can use the below code:

in template:

<input style="display: none;" type="file" @change="onFileSelected"
<button @click="onUpload" />

in data:

  data() {
return {
  selectedFile: null,
  previewImage: null
};}

in methods:

  onFileSelected(event) {
  this.selectedFile = event.target.files[0];
   }

   onUpload() {
const fd = new FormData();
fd.append("file", this.selectedFile, this.selectedFile.name);
fd.append("title", "pedram");
fd.append("caption", "this is caption");


/* file reader for prview image */
const reader = new FileReader();
reader.readAsDataURL(this.selectedFile);
reader.onload = e =>{
                this.previewImage = e.target.result;
};
/* set request header */
const headers = {
  'Content-Disposition':`attachment; filename=${this.selectedFile.name}`,
   Authorization: "Bearer" + this.$cookiz.get("AdminToken"),
  'content-type': 'image' 
};

  this.$axios.post('/wp-json/wp/v2/media', fd, { headers })
    .then(res => {
      console.log(res);
    })
    .catch(err => {
      console.log(err);
    });
},

if you want to preview the image you can use file reader and store it in a data variable then use the data instead of image src like bellow code:

<img @click="$refs.fileInput.click()" v-if="previewImage" :src="previewImage" alt="" class="w-100" />

It took me one day to solve the issue I hope the above codes helps

WP Rest API upload image

7 Answers7

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