I have a site with about 100 registered users. Some of the people will be receiving digital scales. The scales send their weight data to a 3rd party server that then sends a JSON Payload as an HTTP Post to a URL endpoint (my server). The message can include Basic authentication. Can anyone recommend the best approach to get the data into the WP database. Initially I just want to add the weight to their profile with user_metadata. Eventually I will process the data more. I'm good with Wordpress but can't figure out how to jump from http post into wp or even just mysql.

I have a site with about 100 registered users. Some of the people will be receiving digital scales. The scales send their weight data to a 3rd party server that then sends a JSON Payload as an HTTP Post to a URL endpoint (my server). The message can include Basic authentication. Can anyone recommend the best approach to get the data into the WP database. Initially I just want to add the weight to their profile with user_metadata. Eventually I will process the data more. I'm good with Wordpress but can't figure out how to jump from http post into wp or even just mysql.

• rest-api
• api
• json
• http-api

1 Answer 1

Your exact code would depend on how the HTTP notification is sent to your server and on the structure of the JSON, but the first building block is to listen for the incoming post request.

There are lots of WP hooks that would be suitable. One is init, e.g.:

add_action('init', function() {

     $user = 'the_correct_basic_auth_username';
     $password = 'the_correct_basic_auth_password';

    $has_supplied_credentials = !(empty($_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_USER']) && empty($_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_PW']));

    $is_not_authenticated = (
        !$has_supplied_credentials ||
        $_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_USER'] != $AUTH_USER ||
        $_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_PW']   != $AUTH_PASS
    );
    if ($is_not_authenticated) {
        return;
    }

    /* the rest will depend on how the data is sent and the structure of the JSON. 
    Once you have the data in the structure you want it, you can use the update_user_meta() function to add usermeta. Or, depending on what you're saving, use $wpdb or a wrapper function may suite (such as wp_insert_post()) */

});

I took the basic auth checking code from here - https://gist.github/rchrd2/c94eb4701da57ce9a0ad4d2b00794131