[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #63946: Introduce a mechanism for lazy-loading REST routes and handlers

[WordPress Trac]

#63946: Introduce a mechanism for lazy-loading REST routes and handlers
-------------------------+-----------------------------
 Reporter:  prettyboymp  |      Owner:  (none)
     Type:  enhancement  |     Status:  new
 Priority:  normal       |  Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  REST API     |    Version:
 Severity:  normal       |   Keywords:
  Focuses:  performance  |
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 Registering REST API routes through controllers introduces additional
 overhead on every REST request. Benchmarking shows that the default routes
 registered during `create_initial_rest_routes()` take approximately
 8.5–10ms in local testing. While this cost is relatively small in
 isolation, it is incurred on every request regardless of the endpoint
 being accessed. The impact grows even more as plugins register their own
 endpoints on top of core routes.

 The main performance cost is not from `register_rest_route()` itself, but
 from preparing the arguments passed into it. Approximately 20% of this
 overhead is attributed to translation handling.

 One possible solution would be to introduce a function such as
 `register_rest_namespace()`. This would allow a namespace to be declared
 during `rest_api_init` without requiring route arguments to be constructed
 immediately. At request time, during `rest_pre_dispatch`, a namespaced
 hook could be fired for the relevant namespace(s), enabling just-in-time
 registration of only the routes required for that request.

 For API discovery requests, all namespaces would still need to be fully
 registered to ensure complete endpoint visibility. For most other
 requests, however, this approach could significantly reduce the cost of
 processing for all other requests by avoiding argument construction for
 unused routes.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/63946>
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