(WIP/RFC) MERC-3425 - Kill off legacy "snippet" locations and add more content regions

[bookernath]

What?

This removes all of the legacy "snippet" helpers, and replaces them with one or more regions for content injection.

I've also taken some liberty spreading other regions around; I'm mostly putting this up so we can discuss it.

Based off of https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1P4ncQzCrCeJJp8sXgFuAxWKuDqhvFeHmkuJ3b5MytmI/edit#gid=0

ping @pedelman @junedkazi @becomevocal @bigcommerce/merc-team

[bigbot]

Autotagging @bigcommerce/storefront-team @davidchin

[flyingL123]

This is cool. Are these 'regions' exposed anywhere in the control panel UI or the API? How is content meant to be supplied for injection?

[EricSeastrand]

@flyingL123 Guessing that this is to be used with the new Widgets API feature. You would create a Widget entity, and a Placement entity. The placement specifies which Region the widget will be injected into.

[bookernath]

Yep @flyingL123 , @willcodeforfood is correct. We can enable the beta of this feature (API-only for now) for you if you like.

[flyingL123]

@bookernath it would be great to give this feature a try. We have a few use-cases for this.

One example would be the way we display specific reviews on our website homepage. Currently I have to re-release the entire theme just to update the hardcoded featured reviews. If I could instead just add a 'region' to the theme and update the content of it through the API, that would be much better.

Is there any documentation explaining this feature at a higher level? I'm just trying to understand how widgets, placements, and regions all interact.

[mattolson]

@pedelman Thoughts?

[michael811]

@bookernath
Is this region feature available now? I created widget template, widget and placement through API, but can't show anything by {{region name="test"}}, any ideas? Thanks!

[bookernath]

Hi @michael811 , this feature needs to be enabled on a store-by-store basis while it's in beta. Feel free to drop us a note at community@bigcommerce.com to join the beta.

[junedkazi]

@bookernath what is the status on this PR ? Are we moving forward with it or it was just a POC ?

[ghost]

It's a POC at this point. We'll soon leverage the code in this PR to document and enable regions across themes. Most likely we'll open up a new PR when that happens.

[bookernath]

For those on this thread, I'd like to make you aware of the launch of our Widgets API:

https://medium.com/bigcommerce-developer-blog/the-widgets-api-new-ways-to-insert-custom-content-in-bigcommerce-storefronts-db0f9fd4eab5

We'll communicate more in the future for how we envision these being integrated into themes.

[bookernath]

Closing in favor of #1478