TIL - Enable application passwords on WordPress development environment

til-enable-application-passwords-on-wordpress-development-env.md

API Passwords vs Application Passwords

Forget about API passwords, they are useless in production.

You need the "Application Passwords" instead which can be used for "Basic" authentication when calling the REST API.

This requires HTTPS so this is normally not enabled in local development.

Enable Application Passwords in development environment

If you are using environment variables, you can simply set:

WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE=local

I used this when using the official Docker image of WordPress.

Restart the application and application passwords should now be enabled.

I assume that WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE would be on wp-config.php is that correct?

@slick2 yes, the equivalent config will look like this:

define( 'WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE', 'local' );