WordPress REST API (wp-api) 404 Error: Cannot access the WordPress REST API

20 comments

1. UPDATED NEW WAY

   I also faced similar problem in a local project. I used index.php after my project url and it worked.

   http://localhost/myproject/index.php/wp-json/wp/v2/posts
   

   If it displays a 404 error then update permalinks first (see “Paged Navigation Doesn’t Work” section

   If it works, maybe you need to enable mod_rewrite, on ubuntu:

   a2enmod rewrite
   sudo service apache2 restart
   

   Installation

   The REST API is included in WordPress 4.7! Plugins are no longer required, just install the latest version of WordPress and you’re ready to go.

   If you’re before 4.7:

   1. Download plugin from here: http://v2.wp-api.org/

   2. install and activate it.

   Usage

   To get all posts:

   www.mysite.com/wp-json/wp/v2/posts
   

   For the search functionality, searching for test post looks like this:

   /wp-json/wp/v2/posts?filter[s]=test
   

2. I had this problem with the latest WordPress 4.7+. In my case the REST API only worked after I changed the permalinks setting to something other than “Plain”, which was the default setting for my installation.

3. On WPEngine and WP 4.9.2 I only had to update permalinks to get fresh, newly installed site to return v2 API calls. What I did:

   1. Create site
   2. Browse to http://yoursitename.wpengine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/posts
      • get 404
   3. Go to admin, settings, permalinks, choose “Post Name”
   4. Click “Save Changes”
   5. Browse to http://yoursitename.wpengine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/posts
      • success. page displays JSON response

4. It turned out to be a problem with the Apache configuration.

   First, I deleted the .htaccess file in the root wordpress directory.

   Next, I navigated to /etc/apache2/sites-enabled and opened 000-default

   All of the AllowOverride variables were set to None, which I replaced with All.

   That did the trick!

5. It is the file permission error, apply the following solution:

   Edit this file /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
   Change /var/www/ Permissions from “None” to “All”
   Restart the apache2 server.

6. First you’ve to Check if the WordPress REST API is enabled or not

   The best way to check is to visit this URL: https://yoursite.com/wp-json.
   If you see some JSON response, REST API is enabled.
   If it’s showing some error page or returns to home page, REST API is not enabled. Then we’ve to enable it first.

   In this case, you’ve to Enable Permalinks

   1. Visit your page’s admin page (Visit https://yoursite.com/wp-json)
   2. settings > Permalinks (visit https://yoursite.com/wp-admin/options-permalink.php)
   3. Make sure Plain is not selected
   4. Choose Post Name (it’s a best one)
   5. Then click on Save Changes. That will rewrite/repair your .htaccess

   Please see the helping screenshots below:

   

   

   Source

7. I solved this issue through following steps:

   1. Navigate to ..Apache24confhttpd.conf and search for LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so.

   2. Enable rewrite module by removing the # mark.

   3. Replace all the cases of AllowOverride None to AllowOverride All.

   4. Don’t forget to restart apache server. 🙂

8. Adding “AllowOverride All” (as hinted by other authors before) to my apache virtual host configuration on my Ubuntu server via SSH did the trick for me:

   sudo vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/my-website-name.com.conf
   

   and also (if you use letsencrypt):

   sudo vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/my-website-name.com-le-ssl.conf
   

   The files should then look like:

   <VirtualHost *:80>
   # or <VirtualHost *:443> for the SSL configuration
       
       # [...]
       
       DocumentRoot /var/www/my-website-name.com/public_html
   
       <Directory "/var/www/my-website-name.com/public_html">
           # this allows .htaccess files (e.g. generated by WordPress)
           # to overwrite the apache configuration on a directory basis:
           AllowOverride All
       </Directory>
       
       # [...]
       
   </VirtualHost>
   

   Don’t forget to disable and re-enable the site and reload apache to apply the new configuration:

   sudo a2dissite my-website-name.com.conf
   sudo a2dissite my-website-name.com-le-ssl.conf
   sudo a2ensite my-website-name.com.conf
   sudo a2ensite my-website-name.com-le-ssl.conf
   sudo service apache2 reload
   

9. I had to manually make a .htaccess, set it to chmod 664, and copy the permalink rules into it.

   I also played around with

   • Settings > Permalinks
   • Manually updating .htaccess via the code at the bottom of the permalinks page after clicked “Save”
   • Adding “index.php” as one of the other answers suggests
   • Making sure mod rewrite was enabled via a2enmod

10. I found that mysite/wp-json/ was not working, but mysite/?rest_route=/ was normal. This was breaking some, but not all, the REST API features used on my site.

    The answer to this turned out to be a recent change to how I was running my server. This had broken REST API but this was not apparent until later.

    I had changed this domain from using Apache to using nginx, and I had not correctly transferred the .htaccess customisations. The quick solution to this problem was therefore to change back to using Apache. This restored the site to working order immediately.

    I will be changing this domain back to nginx in the future but when I do, I will test it and be careful not to affect the REST API.

11. On WordPress 6

    You can use this URL and no need for URL Rewrite and no need to change your Permalink settings (I saw Gutenberg editor is using this URL to access REST)

    http://example.com/index.php?rest_route=/wp/v2/posts
    

12. I had moved the WordPress install from a subdirectory to another, so in my case the problem was due to the WordPress config in the .htaccess files. It was trying to redirect every page but the homepage to the old directory. It was just a matter of updating olddir to newdir…
    This tripped me up more than once so I thought I’d put it here…

    # BEGIN WordPress
    <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /olddir/
    RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule . /olddir/index.php [L]
    </IfModule>
    
    # END WordPress
    

13. I faced the same problem when I migrated my site from cPanel to Google Cloud Compute Engine Instance; problem was of file permissions which was initially caused due to difference in PHP versions of current deployment from previous deployment.

    Here is the fix How to deal with GCP WordPress error “This page isn’t working example.com is currently unable to handle this request. HTTP ERROR 500

14. I was facing same issue on localhost and I solved this issue with just set RewriteBase Path in .htaccess file which is available at root folder of WordPress project setup.

    **Example:** 
    <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /[folder-name]
    RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule . /[folder-name]/index.php [L]
    </IfModule>
    

15. If you website is https://example.wordpress.com (on wordpress) for example, use the below link which will give you the JSON response irrespective of any API settings/Permalinks etc..

    • https://public-api.wordpress.com/rest/v1.1/sites/example.wordpress.com/posts

    If you want to see all the available endpoints use this –
    https://developer.wordpress.com/docs/api/console/

    Remember to replace **$site** with your domain

    Find the latest documentation here –
    https://developer.wordpress.com/docs/api/

16. I read through a whole bunch of articles and eventually discovered there was a force site to be https plugin installed and activated on my local, however there is no certificate set up. It was making the requests for https when I should have had the https plugin deactivated.

    Once deactivated, I was able to make connections to REST API.

    Not a very in depth answer but it is was my answer. Hope this saves someone some time!

17. If you are on Windows OS change the Permalink Settings as follows:

    Custom structure: /index.php/%postname%/

    

18. If you have tried the other solutions on this page and they haven’t worked, I had success with checking for additional .htaccess files in the root folder above your public_html folder (or wherever you have installed WordPress).

    I found an extra one which may have come from a previous installation or been accidentally moved there – it was giving conflicting instructions to the ‘real’ .htaccess file. Deleting it fixed the problem for me.

19. For me on new website I didn’t had Nginx pretty links setting enabled I add this tolocation / block

            try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args; 
    

20. Try to remove any

    order deny,allow
    deny from all
    allow from …

    from you .htaccess.

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