The REST API is the foundation of the block editor, and has been a part of WordPress for six years. But are we using it to its full potential? This talk will share practical tips for using the REST API in your themes, plugins, and headless apps. We will look at different ways to use post types and metadata to store information in WordPress, and review performance techniques to make your REST endpoints run faster. We’ll share how to use _fields to query only for what you need. We’ll look at how to use Query Monitor to diagnose issues in your custom endpoints. We’ll discuss when you might want to use GraphQL instead of REST. And I will share a component maintainer’s perspective on the best changes we’ve made to the REST API since 4.7, and some exciting features to look forward to in the future!