Search post by categories Wordpress WP-API

Question

I want to search posts by categories in the WP-API.

I know I can search posts by the attribute categories or filter[cat].

But the posts contains more than one category.

I tried to search like this:

{host}/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?categories=69&filter[cat]=[228,246,237]&per_page=50

or

{host}/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?categories=69&filter[cat]=228&filter[cat]=246&filter[cat]=237&per_page=50

or

{host}/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?categories=69&categories=246&categories=237&categories=228

This didn't work for me. It caused the search to look for the last attribute.

Any ideas?

This is the structure of Json response

{
    "id": 9333,
    "date": "2016-08-02T14:17:01",
    "date_gmt": "2016-08-02T12:17:01",
    "guid": {
      "rendered": "{post}/?p=9333"
    },
    "modified": "2016-08-03T08:50:35",
    "modified_gmt": "2016-08-03T06:50:35",
    "slug": "{post}",
    "type": "post",
    "link": "{host}/{post}/",
    "title": {
      "rendered": "{post}"
    },
    "content": {
      "rendered": "{post}"
    },
    "excerpt": {
      "rendered": "{post}"
    },
    "author": 3,
    "featured_media": 0,
    "comment_status": "closed",
    "ping_status": "closed",
    "sticky": false,
    "format": "standard",
    "categories": [
      228,
      237,
      207,
      217,
      246,
      231,
      69,
      221,
      270,
      244
    ],
    "tags": [],
    "_links": []
  }

Thanks!

Answer 1

If you want to get posts from multiple categories, there are few solutions, depending from your needs.

In case when you want to get posts from category with ID = 1 OR category with ID = 2 use the following URL:

http://localhost/lifelog/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?filter[cat]=1,2

or:

http://localhost/lifelog/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?categories=1,2

For case when you want to get posts from category with ID = 1 AND category with ID = 2 you can use:

http://localhost/lifelog/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?filter[category__and][]=1&filter[category__and][]=2

BUT - some filter values used in the filter array needs authenticated user with edit_posts privileges.

Fortunately, there is a more simple solution - WordPress supports links like:

http://example.com/category/test1+test2/

Under above URL you will get list of posts which are assigned to the test1 AND test2 categories. And in the REST API you can achieve the same behaviour with the following URL:

http://localhost/lifelog/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?filter[category_name]=test1%2Btest2

Please remember that you have to replace the + sign into %2B.