WP.org API: Accessing plugin downloads “Today” value?

4 comments

1. Late answer

   A mini plugin as local API

   This plugin gives you – after you filled in the slug of your repository – the downloads stats as array. The keys are the dates, the values the downloads.

   <?php
   /** Plugin Name: (#84254) Plugin stats API */
   function wpse84254_get_download_stats()
   {
       $response = wp_remote_request(
           add_query_arg(
                'slug'
               ,'YOUR-REPO-PLUGIN-SLUG'
               ,'http://wordpress.org/extend/stats/plugin-xml.php'
           )
           ,array( 'sslverify' => false )
       );
       // Check if response is valid
       if ( is_wp_error( $response ) )
           return $response->get_error_message();
       if (
           empty( $response )
           OR 200 !== wp_remote_retrieve_response_code( $response )
           OR 'OK' !== wp_remote_retrieve_response_message( $response )
       )
           return _e( 'No Stats available', 'pluginstats_textdomain' );
   
       $response  = wp_remote_retrieve_body( $response );
       $response  = (array) simplexml_load_string( $response )->children()->chart_data;
       $response  = (array) $response['row'];
       $dates     = (array) array_shift( $response );
       $dates     = $dates['string'];
       // Get rid of unnecessary prepended empty object
       array_shift( $dates );
       $downloads = (array) array_pop( $response )->number;
       if ( count( $dates ) !== count( $downloads ) )
           return;
   
       $result = array_combine(
            $dates
           ,$downloads
       );
       return array_map(
            'absint'
           ,$result
       );
   }
   

   Usage

   To get only the last day + the download number:

   $data = array_unshift( wpse84254_get_download_stats );
   echo key( $data ).' had '.$data.' Downloads';
   

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2. The /stats/plugin/1.0/downloads.php endpoint returns a JSON list the number of downloads for each day:

   http://api.wordpress.org/stats/plugin/1.0/downloads.php?slug={slug}&limit=1&callback=someJsFunction
   

   Replace {slug} with your plugin slug.

   The &limit=1 parameter sets how many days back you want to go. The last day is presumably “today”.

   The &callback=someJsFunction part is optional.

   Also note that in order to get the total number of downloads in a nice JSON format you can use:

   http://api.wordpress.org/plugins/info/1.0/{slug}.json
   

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3. Here is one idea:

   You always have the possibility to scrape the plugin’s download html page:

   http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/some-plugin-slug/stats/
   

   while you don’t have any json/xml/rss sources with the today’s download counter.

   The html part you are interested in has this form:

   <div id="history" class="left">
   <h4>History</h4>
   <table>
       <tr>
           <th scope="row">Today</th>
           <td>7,390</td>
       </tr>
   
       <tr>
           <th scope="row">Yesterday</th>
           <td>12,262</td>
       </tr>
   
       <tr>
           <th scope="row">Last Week</th>
           <td>130,130</td>
       </tr>
   
       <tr class="last-child">
           <th scope="row">All Time</th>
           <td>13,639,901</td>
       </tr>
   </table>
   </div>
   

   You could use wp_remote_get() and cache the results.

   Here is a function to fetch the data, it takes a plugin_slug (like akismet) as input:

   function get_todays_downloads($plugin_slug){    
       $downloads_today="?";
       $url="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/".$plugin_slug."/stats/";
   
       // fetch the html page:
       //
       $response = wp_remote_get( $url );
   
       if( is_wp_error( $response ) ) {
          $error_message = $response->get_error_message();
          //echo "Something went wrong:". $error_message;
   
          // let's show "error" if we have problems fetching the page:
          //
          $downloads_today="error";
   
       } else {
   
           // get the body of the page:
           //
           $html=$response['body'];
   
           // let's strip out the newlines and tabs:
           //
           $html=str_replace("n","",$html);
           $html=str_replace("t","",$html);
   
           // let's find this type of html string:
           //    Today</th><td>12</td></tr>
           //
           preg_match('/Today</th><td>([0-9,]+)</td></tr>/i', $html, $matches);
   
           // check if we got a match:
           //
           if(isset($matches[1])){
               $downloads_today=$matches[1];
           }
       }
       return $downloads_today;        
   }
   

   You can use it like this:

   // let's find out how many times the Akismet plugin has been downloaded today
   //
   echo "Downloads today: ".get_todays_downloads('akismet');
   

   and it will give you results like:

    Downloads today: 7,397
   

   ps: just remember that the html of the page can change in the future 😉

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4. The API does not seem to provide this info. The two datasets you can grab for plugins are:

   http://api.wordpress.org/plugins/info/1.0/[plugin name]
   This will return total downloads, not per day.

   http://api.wordpress.org/stats/plugin/1.0/[plugin name]
   This will return the versions

   You will have to scrape the HTML.

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