The goal of this session is to provide a gentle introduction to some of the most commonly used WordPress APIs that can be utilized by developers and site admins to make their life easy, How WordPress stores metadata inside the database, Adding, updating, retrieving and deleting the metadata information and finally he’ll take a look at the core WordPress code that drives the metadata API and how one can use it to create own custom meta tables to take your WordPress projects to the next level.

WordPress APIs: The APIs which Harshal be covering are as follows:

1. Plugin API – Hooks, Actions and Filters:
When beginners needs to perform a specific task what they usually do is they copy and paste a specific code snippet which they got from stackoverflow or from a random blog and paste it inside their functions.php file. However, most of them are unaware of the way that code snippet works. In this section, I’ll provide quick overview of What WordPress hooks are and How developers can utilize them to write more efficient code.

2. Shortcode API:
Shortcodes are one of the most simple and easy to use features in WordPress. In this section, I’ll cover, How users can create their own custom shortcodes which can be useful to insert variety of content into their WordPress website.

3. Dashboard Widget API:
This is one of the most overlooked features of WordPress. This can be very helpful, for branding or display custom information to users when he logs into his WordPress Dashboard. In this section, I’ll cover, how developers can utilize WordPress Dashboard widgets API to create custom WordPress dashboard widgets.

4. Options API:
One of the most popular API available in WordPress used to create, fetch, update, and delete options in a simple and standardized way. WP plugins, themes, and even WordPress itself, holds lot of data in form of options inside the database that matters to your WordPress website. Knowing how you can use or update these in a plugin or theme of very important. In this section, I’ll provide a quick overview of this API, which can be helpful to beginners to get started with this API.

5. Metadata API:
Metadata API is one of the primary reasons which make WordPress a powerful CMS. It allows the users to store custom fields inside WordPress database. This feature is widely used by plugins to store and update information.In this section, I will cover various ways of working with WordPress post meta data