The canonical document

Everything Octa Editor reads or writes is the same canonical JSON document. The panel, the bulk importer, the REST API and the Abilities API all speak it. Learn it once.

Post vs term

A document is a term when it has a taxonomy key, and a post otherwise. You can also state it explicitly with "type": "post" or "type": "term".

Post

{
  "type": "post",
  "post_type": "page",
  "status": "publish",
  "title": "Post title",
  "slug": "post-title",
  "excerpt": "Short summary.",
  "menu_order": 0,
  "parent": "parent-slug",
  "seo": { "title": "", "description": "" },
  "taxonomies": { "category": ["news", "releases"] },
  "fields": { "hero_section": { "heading": "…" } },
  "content": "<p>HTML body.</p>"
}

Field	Type	Notes
title	string	Required when creating.
post_type	string	Defaults to post. Must exist and be allowed. Immutable on update.
status	string	publish / draft / pending / future / private. On create, omitted means draft. Publish statuses need publish capability. trash is rejected.
slug	string	a-z 0-9 -. The value to save, and the default identity key. A collision is auto-suffixed (-2) with a warning.
excerpt	string	Omit for no change. "" clears it.
content	string (HTML)	Omit for no change. "" clears it. Put it last in the document.
menu_order	int	Order for types with page attributes.
parent	string | int	Prefer the parent slug (portable). A number is an ID. 0 means top level. Part of identity for hierarchical types.
template	string	Page template file. "" means default.
featured_image	int	Attachment ID. 0 or null removes it.
author	int	Author ID, applied only if the caller may edit others’ posts.
date	string	YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS, site local time.
seo	object	{ title, description }, mapped to Yoast or Rank Math.
taxonomies	object	{ taxonomy: [term-slugs] }.
fields	object	ACF fields, mirroring the theme’s structure.

Term

{
  "type": "term",
  "taxonomy": "series",
  "title": "Term name",
  "slug": "term-name",
  "parent": "parent-slug",
  "description": "Archive description.",
  "seo": { "title": "", "description": "" },
  "fields": {}
}

taxonomy is required, and its presence marks the document as a term. title is required when creating. description, parent, seo and fields behave as above.

Partial-first writes

A document only needs the keys you want to change.

• A missing key leaves that field untouched.
• An empty value ("", null, []) deliberately clears the field.
• An empty or null slug is the exception. It is ignored, never applied.

This makes it safe to send a tiny document that touches only one field.

Control keys (_*)

Keys that start with _ are never data. They steer the write. _match sets identity, _dry_run and _strict control validation, and the read-only _meta block comes from exports. See Record identity and Dry-run, strict & warnings.

Stateless by design

Octa Editor keeps nothing of its own. Core fields go through WordPress, fields through ACF, and seo through your SEO plugin. Reading a record just re-assembles the document from those sources.