Are you developing a new WordPress project and planning to use categories? In this post, I will show you how to use the WordPress Rest API to bulk create WordPress categories.
I will try to keep this article short and concise as the Python script will do the work
1, Import Libraries
2, Connect to the WordPress Rest API
3, Load your List of Categories
4, Build the Category Schemas
5, Run the Script
6 Testing the Output
I have recently also written a Python tutorial to bulk create WordPress post via the REST API. Read it here - https://chrisleverseo.com/t/python-...-from-a-csv-file-using-wordpress-rest-api.93/
Thanks for reading.
I will try to keep this article short and concise as the Python script will do the work
Table of Contents
1, Import Libraries
2, Connect to the WordPress Rest API
3, Load your List of Categories
4, Build the Category Schemas
5, Run the Script
6 Testing the Output
Import Libraries
Import the following Python libraries. We need these libraries to successfully run and test the script output.
Code:
# Import modules
import pandas as pd
import requests
import csv
import json
import base64
from tqdm.notebook import tqdmConnect to the REST API
Replace the API credentials with your own credentials.
Code:
# WordPress Rest API credentials
user = 'admin'
password = 'mV22 tSqH Ytyx V0ZF zaNd NP9n' # freeze
url = 'https://mydomain.com/wp-json/wp/v2'
wp_connection = user + ':' + password
token = base64.b64encode(wp_connection.encode())
# Base64 Authentication WordPress
headers = {'Authorization': 'Basic ' + token.decode('utf-8')}Load your list of Categories
Load in your local or remote CSV file containing the list of categories that you wish to create. To begin with, you only need the category ID and category name for this script to work. If you are going to create descriptions and custom slugs load that data. Use one column per schema. Read the WordPress handbook for schema names - https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/reference/categories/
Code:
# Paste your csv file name here - for example: sample-data.csv or remote link
df = pd.read_csv("c:\data\terms5.csv")
dfBuild the Category Schemas
Add or remove category schemas to suit your requirements. The minimum requirement is the category parent ID and category name.
Code:
# The minimum is category parent and category name
def wp_cat_insert(parent_id, cat_name):
post = {'parent': parent_id,
'name': cat_name
}
wp_cat_insert_request = requests.post(url + '/categories', headers=headers, json=post)Run the Command
We are now on the final stage of the script. We need to execute the code. This next code snippet executes the script with progress status using the TQDM module.
Code:
# Executes the script and runs the TQDM progress bar
for index, row in tqdm(df.iterrows()):
# Add or remove WordPress category schemas variables below
wp_cat_insert(row["parent_id"], row["cat_name"])Testing the Output
To test the script and see if the categories have been created via the API you can check in PHP Myadmin or create a new dataframe to fetch the list of categories. Word of warning you can only retrieve 100 rows in a single WordPress API call.
Code:
# Wordpress max row API call is 100 rows
df = pd.read_json(
"https://mydomain.com/wp-json/wp/v2/categories/?per_page=100")
df = pd.DataFrame(df, columns = ['name', 'slug', 'parent', 'id', 'link'])
with pd.option_context('display.max_rows', None, 'display.max_columns', None):
display(df)
# export dataframe to csv
# df.to_csv(r'c:\categories.csv', index = False)Wrapping it up
That's it - use the above python snippets to build the script in Jupyter Notebook or Google Colab. Comment below if you have any questions or suggestions to improve the script. I decided to write this bulk create WordPress categories as I'm currently working on a project that has many thousands of categories.I have recently also written a Python tutorial to bulk create WordPress post via the REST API. Read it here - https://chrisleverseo.com/t/python-...-from-a-csv-file-using-wordpress-rest-api.93/
Thanks for reading.
Last edited: