Can’t make an external api call in php side of wordpress child theme

Question

So I finally figured out my problems. One mistake I was making was not structuring $options properly.

This is WRONG what i did:

$options = array(
    'http' => array(
        'header' => "Authorization: Bearer $api_key\r\n",
        'method' => 'GET',
    ),
);

I’m not supposed to use http. This is the CORRECT WAY to do it:

$options = array(
        'headers' => array(
            'Authorization' => 'Bearer ' . $api_key,
        ),
        'method' => 'GET',
    );

You have to use headers instead of http when passing in an api key.

Another mistake I made was improperly getting the response from wp_remote_get().

This is the WRONG WAY:

// Make the API call
$response = wp_remote_get($url, $options);
if ($response === false) {
// Handle error
return false;
}
// Process the response
$data = json_decode($response, true);
return new WP_REST_Response($data, 200);
}

using wp_remote_get() like this is correct:

$response = wp_remote_get($url, $options);

However, the way i passed the response into json_decode($response, true) is incorrect. I had to extract the response body like this:

This is the CORRECT WAY:

// Extract the response body
    $body = wp_remote_retrieve_body($response);

// Convert the JSON response to an associative array
    $data = json_decode($body, true);

After i did this, I could access the data from the api response. Here’s my correct code in its entirety:

function make_api_call_to_third_party() {
    
    $url="https://api.pledge.to/v1/organizations";
    $api_key = '{my api key}';
    
    $options = array(
        'headers' => array(
            'Authorization' => 'Bearer ' . $api_key,
        ),
        'method' => 'GET',
    );
    
    // Make the API call
    $response = wp_remote_get($url, $options);
    //handle error section
    if (is_wp_error($response)) {
        $error_message = $response->get_error_message();
        // Handle the error, return an error response or log it
        return new WP_REST_Response(array('error' => $error_message), 500);
    }
    // Extract the response body
    $body = wp_remote_retrieve_body($response);
    
    // Log the response for debugging
    error_log('API response: ' . $body);
    
    // Convert the JSON response to an associative array
    $data = json_decode($body, true);

    // Check for JSON decoding errors
    if (json_last_error() !== JSON_ERROR_NONE) {
        // Handle JSON decoding error
        return new WP_REST_Response(array('error' => 'Failed to decode JSON response'), 500);
    }
    
    //process the response
    return new WP_REST_Response($data, 200);
    }

    //function for permissions callback
    function custom_theme_api_permissions(){
        return true;

    }

I was stuck on this for a really long time. So i hope this helps someone out there. Happy coding everyone 🙂

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