REST API: Allow multiple leading slashes at the beginning of the endpoint path

[jnylen0]

Follow-up to #38873. The ​official API console is currently broken on all of my sites due to a duplicated slash in between the REST prefix and the namespace (wp-json//wp/v2/posts):

Since this is an easy mistake to make, and it's broken in a released plugin, let's fix it.

[rachelbaker]

@jnylen0 What is the impact of this change on sites with non-pretty permalinks or index links?

[jnylen0]

Under other permalink structures, it looks like this change will still fix things without breaking other things.

Plain permalinks

The console sends /?rest_route=//wp/v2/posts which fails unless this change is made.

PATHINFO permalinks

Permalink structure: /index.php/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

The console sends /index.php/wp-json//wp/v2/posts which works fine either way.

The rest_route query var is correctly /wp/v2/posts before this change; I'm not sure if this is because of my server or WP internals.

[joehoyle]

I might be misunderstanding this, is it that we should support // in URLs, or is it that we should never make URLs with // in them? If it's the former, I think that's a terrible idea, if it's the latter, I think it's a great idea :D

[jnylen0]

There is at least 1 plugin out in the wild that does this incorrectly... and it's by "WP REST API Team" and we ​officially promote it.

Presumably the console worked at one point, so whenever it stopped working was a BC break.

Also, if the people most familiar with the API made a mistake here, how can we expect other WP devs not to make the same mistake?

[rachelbaker]

As noted in the #core-restapi slack channel they console plugin was a 1 week hack project to port over the WordPress.com console for the REST API. The console plugin should be fixed (and will be by @joehoyle).
I do not think we should support // paths in core and recommend closing this ticket.

​https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/core-restapi/p1480462513002736

[jnylen0]

It looks like this is already fixed in the plugin's repo: ​https://github.com/WP-API/rest-api-console/commit/cf73d647dbce4d7e6f27a703884136546e6c47ff

@rmccue can you deploy a new version of the console plugin from master? Edit: done, thanks!