Documentation

Connecting Your First Source

How to add a REST API or RSS/Atom provider, map fields to WordPress, inspect requests, and extract full-text articles.

Adding a REST API Provider

A provider is a single configured connection to one REST API endpoint. You can have multiple providers running simultaneously, each fetching to its own post type, category, and schedule.

  1. Go to Ingestics → Providers → Add New (or Add API Provider).
  2. Give the provider a name (internal reference only, e.g. “NewsAPI – Technology”).
  3. Enter the Endpoint URL. Supports https:// and http://.
  4. Select the HTTP Method (GET is most common; POST is supported) and the expected response format (JSON, XML, etc.).
  5. Add any required query parameters or request headers using the key/value fields.
  6. Configure Authentication — choose the auth type and enter your API key, Bearer token, or OAuth2 credentials. All credentials are encrypted on save. See Authentication.
  7. Use the JSON Path Selector / Field Mapping to map response fields to WordPress post fields: title, content, excerpt, image URL, source URL, date.
  8. Set the Post Status (Publish / Draft / Pending), Post Type (Lite+), and Category for published posts.
  9. Click Save Provider. The provider appears in the Providers list.
  10. Click Fetch Now to run a manual test fetch.

Use a Provider Preset (Lite+) to pre-fill settings for common source types — available presets: YouTube API, Generic API-Key, Generic Bearer (API); Google News RSS, YouTube Video RSS, Podcast RSS (RSS). Saves significant setup time.

Adding an RSS / Atom Feed

Ingestics can subscribe to any RSS 2.0 or Atom feed and publish new items as WordPress posts automatically.

  1. Go to Ingestics → Providers → Add New and select RSS / Atom as the source type (or click Add RSS Provider).
  2. Enter the feed URL directly, or enter a site URL and click Auto-Discover Feed / enable Auto-Discovery (Lite+) — Ingestics will find the feed URL automatically.
  3. Configure Post Type, Post Status, and Category.
  4. Set the Output Mode (Business): full_content, excerpt, summary_only, title_only, or raw_payload.
  5. Click Save Provider, then Fetch Now to verify the feed is accessible and items are imported correctly.

Field Mapping

Field mapping tells Ingestics which JSON or XML fields from the API response correspond to WordPress post fields. For HTML responses, selector mapping is also available for structured extraction.

WordPress FieldDescription
post_titleMaps to the post title. Supports dot notation for nested fields, e.g. data.title.
post_contentMaps to the post body. HTML is preserved.
post_excerptMaps to the post excerpt.
_thumbnail_idProvide a URL field — Ingestics downloads and attaches the image automatically.
post_dateUse an API date field to preserve the original publish date.
Custom metaMap source fields to configured custom meta keys.

Pro+ tip: Use the Visual Query Builder (Pro+) to browse the live API response and click fields to map them — no dot-notation required. See Scheduling & Automation for the Query Builder’s parameter presets.

Call Inspector / Preview Tool

The planned/last-call preview shows the request URL, headers, parameters, and last actual call details without exposing secrets. Use Run Live Test on Lite+ to fire a real HTTP request and inspect the raw response and parsed items before saving a provider.

  1. On the provider edit screen, click Inspect.
  2. Click Load Planned Call to see exactly what request Ingestics will send: the full URL (with query params), all request headers, and the authentication method. Sensitive values are masked with ****.
  3. Click Load Last Call to review the most recent actual request and response — useful for debugging unexpected results.
  4. Click Run Live Test (Lite+) to fire a real HTTP request immediately and display the raw response body and parsed items side by side. If field mapping is configured, matched fields are highlighted.

Planned and last-call previews are available on Free and above. Run Live Test is available on Lite and above and uses your WordPress server, so the response reflects what Ingestics will see during real fetches. All sensitive header values (API keys, tokens) are automatically masked in the Inspector output, and the preview/Run Live Test tools never expose raw API keys in the UI.

Full-Text Extraction Lite+

Many RSS feeds only include a short summary or truncated excerpt rather than the full article body. Full-Text Extraction fetches the linked article page and extracts the main content, giving you the complete text as the post body.

  1. On the feed provider settings, enable Full-Text Extraction.
  2. Set the max character limit and choose append or replace mode.
  3. Ingestics will follow each item’s link, fetch the page, and extract the article body using its content-detection algorithm. The extracted content replaces the feed summary as post_content.
  4. If full-text extraction falls back to baseline mode for an item, that item is automatically forced to Draft for manual review.

Full-text extraction makes an additional HTTP request per feed item. For high-volume feeds, consider increasing your server’s PHP execution time limit.