Render widget areas referencing blocks in a wp_area post on the website frontend #15651

jorgefilipecosta · 2019-05-15T12:13:33Z

Description

Here we implement a simple filter that makes a sidebar referencing a post_id reference a simple widget that renders the content of the post.

This is the first version and the most straightforward approach. To improve back-compatibility, I think we can parse the post. And replace legacy widget blocks to point to the original widget they referred, this change will allow users that go the previous screen to see the widgets they had there as they would typically see.

How has this been tested?

I executed this code in the browser console:

wp.apiFetch({
    path: '/__experimental/widget-areas/sidebar-1',
    data: { content: '<!-- wp:columns --><div class="wp-block-columns has-2-columns"><!-- wp:column --><div class="wp-block-column"><!-- wp:paragraph --><p>Col 1</p><!-- /wp:paragraph --></div><!-- /wp:column --><!-- wp:column --><div class="wp-block-column"><!-- wp:paragraph --><p>Col 2</p><!-- /wp:paragraph --></div><!-- /wp:column --></div><!-- /wp:columns -->' },
    method: 'POST',
}).then(console.log);

I went to the website frontend and verified the blocks appeared there.

noisysocks

Nice work! Most of this looks familiar from my try/ branch, so of course I'm happy 🙂

When I test I see a PHP warning:

It looks like wp_widget_control() in wp-admin/includes/widget.php accesses global $sidebars_widgets; directly instead of calling wp_get_sidebars_widgets().

Can we work around this? Ideally global $sidebars_widgets should not contain the new data format so that it remains backwards compatible. Perhaps we could do a $sidebars_widgets = gutenberg_swap_out_sidebars_blocks_for_block_widgets( $sidebars_widgets ); somewhere—possibly in the init action.

lib/class-experimental-wp-widget-blocks-manager.php

noisysocks · 2019-05-23T05:20:41Z

lib/widgets.php

+ * @param array $blocks   Array of blocks.
+ */
+function gutenberg_blocks_to_widget( $blocks ) {
+	$widget_id = 'blocks-widget-' . md5( Experimental_WP_Widget_Blocks_Manager::serialize_block( $blocks ) );


Let's pull this function out of Experimental_WP_Widget_Blocks_Manager. We already have serialize_blocks so it makes sense in my mind that we'd have serialize_block as well.

Hi @noisysocks, in other PR @youknowriad recommended that we keep serialize_blocks inside Experimental_WP_Widget_Blocks_Manager to reinforce the experimental nature of the function. Given that recomendation, I guess we should also keep function gutenberg_blocks_to_widget( $blocks ) inside.

Also what does serializing means? Is it's the same as the frontend? If it is, it means the blocks should be fully parsed and not just half-parsed.

I think the serialization we have here is very simple and may not even work on all cases yet. It only needs to work for legacy widgets. I guess it is better to keep it inside the experimental class. And then we may have to rethink this to simply have functions like serialize_legacy_widgets which make their objectives more clear and may end up being public.

noisysocks · 2019-05-23T05:22:27Z

lib/class-experimental-wp-widget-blocks-manager.php

@@ -245,6 +257,9 @@ public static function serialize_blocks( $blocks ) {
 	 * @return string String representing the block.
 	 */
 	public static function serialize_block( $block ) {
+		if( ! isset( $block[ 'blockName' ] ) ) {
+			return '';


Usually in PHP one returns false when there's an error. It should not impact serialize_blocks because PHP automatically converts false to '' when casting to a string.

php > var_dump( 'hello' . false . 'jorge' ); string(10) "hellojorge"

jorgefilipecosta · 2019-05-23T10:12:41Z

It looks like wp_widget_control() in wp-admin/includes/widget.php accesses global $sidebars_widgets; directly instead of calling wp_get_sidebars_widgets().

Can we work around this? Ideally global $sidebars_widgets should not contain the new data format so that it remains backwards compatible. Perhaps we could do a $sidebars_widgets = gutenberg_swap_out_sidebars_blocks_for_block_widgets( $sidebars_widgets ); somewhere—possibly in the init action.

I was not being able to reproduce the problem may be a plugin/theme is changing some behavior?
I tried to set the global in the init action but that's irrelevant as wp_get_sidebars_widgets changes the global variable anyway. I updated the filter to make sure the variable is also updated by the filter so if someone uses the global directly it should see the old structure. Let me know if this problem is persisting. I added some debug code and verified that in the line the error was appearing the global is set to the back compatible structure.

I also tried to use a lower level version where we filter directly using the filter option_sidebars_widgets so that we would change the result of get_option( 'sidebars_widgets' ) directly. That approach proved to be unfruitful given the mechanism of the options where we have cache the save become intermittent, for example saving in our endpoint sometimes caused the blocks to save as a widget block.

noisysocks

Yet again, I'm now not getting that error! Something must have been weird in my dev environment yesterday.

This looks good to get in and iterate on. There's a few minor suggestions that I'll fix up myself.

noisysocks · 2019-05-24T05:46:05Z

lib/class-experimental-wp-widget-blocks-manager.php

+	 * @param array $options   Widget options.
+	 * @param array $arguments Arguments array.
+	 */
+	public static function gutenberg_output_blocks_widget( $options, $arguments ) {


Now that these methods are inside the experimental class, they don't need the gutenberg_ prefix.

Renamed in 300e1c2.

noisysocks · 2019-05-24T05:46:25Z

lib/class-experimental-wp-widget-blocks-manager.php

+	 * @param array $blocks   Array of blocks.
+	 */
+	public static function gutenberg_blocks_to_widget( $blocks ) {
+		$widget_id = 'blocks-widget-' . md5( Experimental_WP_Widget_Blocks_Manager::serialize_block( $blocks ) );


Could be simply self::serialize_block.

Done in 2431bf6.

noisysocks · 2019-05-24T05:50:39Z

lib/class-experimental-wp-widget-blocks-manager.php

+	 */
+	public static function gutenberg_swap_out_sidebars_blocks_for_block_widgets( $sidebars_widgets_input ) {
+		global $sidebars_widgets;
+		if ( null === self::$unfiltered_sidebar_widgets ) {


If gutenberg_swap_out_sidebars_blocks_for_block_widgets is called again with a different $sidebars_widgets_input then this won't update its cached copy of self::$unfiltered_sidebar_widgets.

We probably want:

if ( $sidebars_widgets_input !== self::$unfiltered_sidebar_widgets ) {

Actually, not sure about this. Maybe it's not a problem. Is global $sidebars_widgets ever updated?

Squashed commits: [fa58e1f] Update lib/class-experimental-wp-widget-blocks-manager.php Co-Authored-By: Robert Anderson <robert@noisysocks.com> [ee18b08] Render widget areas referencing blocks in a wp_area post on the website frontend.

youknowriad · 2019-05-24T09:34:44Z

Awesome work on all these widget screen related PRs @noisysocks @jorgefilipecosta

jorgefilipecosta added [Type] Task Issues or PRs that have been broken down into an individual action to take [Feature] Widgets Screen The block-based screen that replaced widgets.php. labels May 15, 2019

jorgefilipecosta requested review from aduth, gziolo, nerrad, noisysocks and youknowriad as code owners May 15, 2019 12:13

jorgefilipecosta force-pushed the add/logic-to-render-widget-areas-referencinga-wp-area-on-the-website-front-end branch 5 times, most recently from 8db7744 to ee18b08 Compare May 22, 2019 23:24

noisysocks requested changes May 23, 2019

View reviewed changes

jorgefilipecosta force-pushed the add/logic-to-render-widget-areas-referencinga-wp-area-on-the-website-front-end branch 4 times, most recently from ff4fc68 to 597de7f Compare May 23, 2019 22:55

noisysocks reviewed May 24, 2019

View reviewed changes

noisysocks approved these changes May 24, 2019

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jorgefilipecosta and others added 3 commits May 24, 2019 08:57

revisions (+2 squashed commits)

c6dc6bc

Squashed commits: [fa58e1f] Update lib/class-experimental-wp-widget-blocks-manager.php Co-Authored-By: Robert Anderson <robert@noisysocks.com> [ee18b08] Render widget areas referencing blocks in a wp_area post on the website frontend.

Remove unnecessary gutenberg_ prefix

50bf7ca

Simplify call to self::serialize_blocks

c618839

jorgefilipecosta force-pushed the add/logic-to-render-widget-areas-referencinga-wp-area-on-the-website-front-end branch from 2431bf6 to c618839 Compare May 24, 2019 08:52

jorgefilipecosta merged commit 9b4f31a into master May 24, 2019

jorgefilipecosta deleted the add/logic-to-render-widget-areas-referencinga-wp-area-on-the-website-front-end branch May 24, 2019 09:05

youknowriad added this to the 5.8 (Gutenberg) milestone May 24, 2019

jorgefilipecosta mentioned this pull request May 29, 2019

Widget-block Screen in wp-admin #13204

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aduth mentioned this pull request May 30, 2019

Project Management: Merge lib and REST controllers CODEOWNERS #15925

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Render widget areas referencing blocks in a wp_area post on the website frontend #15651

Render widget areas referencing blocks in a wp_area post on the website frontend #15651

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youknowriad commented May 24, 2019

Render widget areas referencing blocks in a wp_area post on the website frontend #15651

Render widget areas referencing blocks in a wp_area post on the website frontend #15651

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jorgefilipecosta commented May 15, 2019 • edited Loading

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How has this been tested?

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