The WordPress coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. development team builds WordPress! Follow this site for general updates, status reports, and the occasional code debate. There’s lots of ways to contribute:
Found a bugbugA bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority.?Create a ticket in the bug tracker.
Dev notesdev noteEach important change in WordPress Core is documented in a developers note, (usually called dev note). Good dev notes generally include a description of the change, the decision that led to this change, and a description of how developers are supposed to work with that change. Dev notes are published on Make/Core blog during the beta phase of WordPress release cycle. Publishing dev notes is particularly important when plugin/theme authors and WordPress developers need to be aware of those changes.In general, all dev notes are compiled into a Field Guide at the beginning of the release candidate phase. are shipping!
BlockBlockBlock is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. Editor APIAPIAn API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. Changes to Support Multiple Adminadmin(and super admin) Screens in WP 5.8
Bundled themes changes in WordPress 5.8
Extending the Site Health interface in WordPress 5.8
Block API Enhancements in WordPress 5.8
Meeting notes and stuff
Regular posts on A Week in CoreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. plus CSSCSSCascading Style Sheets. and Editor chat summaries are also available to peruse.
WP5.8 Things
Test the beta! https://wordpress.org/news/2021/06/wordpress-5-8-beta-3/
We added a betaBetaA pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process.! Beta 4 is Thursday
RC1 is next Tuesday
Call for help! https://core.trac.wordpress.org/tickets/major/workflow everything in the Has Patch/Needs Testing and Needs Patch sections could use input.
Component Check-in
Build/Test Tools: sourceMaps are now ignored for non WordPress Core files to avoid a build failure for custom plugins or themes located in build/wp-content. See ticketticketCreated for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker.#52689 for more details.
GitGitGit is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency. Git is easy to learn and has a tiny footprint with lightning fast performance. Most modern plugin and theme development is being done with this version control system. https://git-scm.com/. is now used when fetching the WordPress Importer for unit tests. Previously, SVNSVNSubversion, the popular version control system (VCS) by the Apache project, used by WordPress to manage changes to its codebase. was used and the commands were not correctly run within the Docker container. See ticket #52909 for more details.
Bundled themes: There are a few tickets related to polishing the new blocks added in 5.8 that need testing. And the default themes also need more testing in general for 5.8. If that’s within your area of expertise, please feel free to help out with that.
Welcome back to a new issue of Week in CoreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.. Let’s take a look at what changed on TracTracAn open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress. between June 21 and June 28, 2021.
60 commits
64 contributors
79 tickets created
8 tickets reopened
78 tickets closed
Please note that the WordPress Core team released WordPress 5.8 beta 3 and beta 4 last week. Everyone is welcome to help testing the next major releasemajor releaseA release, identified by the first two numbers (3.6), which is the focus of a full release cycle and feature development. WordPress uses decimaling count for major release versions, so 2.8, 2.9, 3.0, and 3.1 are sequential and comparable in scope. of WordPress 🌟
TicketticketCreated for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. numbers are based on the Trac timeline for the period above. The following is a summary of commits, organized by component and/or focus.
Code changes
Build/Test tools
Add the regenerator-runtime script as a dependency to wp-polyfill – #52941
Correct PHPUnit version requirement in tests using ::createPartialMock() – #52625
Replace assertEquals() with assertSameSets() in text widgetWidgetA WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user. tests – #52482, #52625
Require PHPUnit >= 6 in tests using ::createPartialMock() – #52625
Use more appropriate assertions in a few tests – #52625
Bundled Themes
Improve display of blocks in widget areas – #53422
Improve GutenbergGutenbergThe Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ check before activating an FSE theme – #53410
Prevent a Full Site Editing theme from being activated when Gutenberg is not active – #53410
Remove unexpected border around the Theme Details button – #53473
Twenty Nineteen: Update margins on full- and wide-aligned blocks in the editor – #53428
Twenty Thirteen: Improve the display of the Query LoopLoopThe Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each post to be displayed on the current page, and formats it according to how it matches specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code in the Loop will be processed on each post. https://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop.blockBlockBlock is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. – #53438
Twenty Twenty-One: Add margins around content in Post Template block – #53389, #53398
Twenty Twenty-One: Add spacing around Query block when there is a background color – #53398
Twenty Twenty-One: Use the theme version when enqueueing theme assets – #53502
Twenty Twenty: Remove extra margin within the Query Loop block – #53482
Coding standards
Apply an alignment fix from running composer format – #53481
Fix WPCSWPCSThe collection of PHP_CodeSniffer rules (sniffs) used to format and validate PHP code developed for WordPress according to the WordPress Coding Standards.
May also be an acronym referring to the Accessibility, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc. coding standards as published in the WordPress Coding Standards Handbook. issues in [51227] – #53475
Use a consistent check for parent items in WP_Walker – #53474
Docs
Document api_version and variations properties in WP_Block_Type::__construct() – #53518
Fix typo in widgets-block-editor feature documentation – #53424
Remove inaccurate @sincetagtagA directory in Subversion. WordPress uses tags to store a single snapshot of a version (3.6, 3.6.1, etc.), the common convention of tags in version control systems. (Not to be confused with post tags.) – #53461, #50105
Shorten the copyright notice for the WP_REST_Sidebars_Controller class – #41683
Update documentation for WP_Widget_Block per the documentation standards – #52628, #53461
Various docblockdocblock(phpdoc, xref, inline docs) corrections for code added in 5.8 – #53461
Various filterFilterFilters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. docblock improvements – #52920
Correct variable names in get_block_editor_settings() – #53458
Ports theme.jsonJSONJSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML. changes for betaBetaA pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. 3 – #53397
Do not load a default font family for themes with theme.json
Move caching to endpoint for unique responses – #53435
Send localeLocaleA locale is a combination of language and regional dialect. Usually locales correspond to countries, as is the case with Portuguese (Portugal) and Portuguese (Brazil). Other examples of locales include Canadian English and U.S. English., version with remote pattern requests – #53435
Update the packages with a number of fixes targeted for Beta 4 – #53397
General
Ensure svn:eol-style is consistently set for all recently added files – #53528
Media
Add lazy-loading support to block-based widgets – #53463, #53464
Correct undefined variable in wp_ajax_query_attachments – #50105
Improve upload page media item layout on smaller screens – #51754
Prevent uploading and show an error message when the server doesn’t support editing of WebP files and image sub-sizes cannot be created – #53475
Prevent uploading and show an error message when the server doesn’t support editing of WebP images, take II. Add new, better error message for it – #53475
REST APIREST APIThe REST API is an acronym for the RESTful Application Program Interface (API) that uses HTTP requests to GET, PUT, POST and DELETE data. It is how the front end of an application (think “phone app” or “website”) can communicate with the data store (think “database” or “file system”) https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/.
Include the sidebarSidebarA sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme. ID when saving a widget – #53452
Retrieve latest widgets before loading sidebars – #53489
Site Health
Add a unique wrapper for dashboard widget content – #53521
Widgets
Fix non-multi widgets not appearing in wp_inactive_widgets – #53534
Add editor styles to the widgets block editor – #53344. – #53388
Add missing label and description to CustomizerCustomizerTool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings. controls – #53487
Add support for the Widgets Editor on after_setup_theme instead of widgets_init – #53424
Avoid a TypeError when adding a widget in the Customizer – #53488, #53421, #53419
Fix an “InvalidinvalidA resolution on the bug tracker (and generally common in software development, sometimes also notabug) that indicates the ticket is not a bug, is a support request, or is generally invalid. value” warning when adding a new widget in the Customizer – #53479
Fix widget preview not working if widget registered via a instance
The new template editor is loaded in an iframeiframeiFrame is an acronym for an inline frame. An iFrame is used inside a webpage to load another HTML document and render it. This HTML document may also contain JavaScript and/or CSS which is loaded at the time when iframe tag is parsed by the user’s browser. to isolate it from the rest of the adminadmin(and super admin) screen. This has the following benefits:
Admin styles no longer affect the editor content, so there’s no need to reset any of these rules.
Content styles no longer affect the admin screen, so blockBlockBlock is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. and theme CSSCSSCascading Style Sheets. rules no longer need to be prefixed.
Viewport relative CSS units will work correctly. The dimensions of the editor content is usually not the same as the dimensions of the admin page, so without an iframe units like vw will be relative to the admin page.
Media queries will also work natively, without needing to fake them, as we did before, which is fragile.
In general, it makes the lives of block and theme authors easier because styles from the front-end can be dropped in with very little, if nothing, to adjust. This also applies to lighter blocks, where the editor DOM structure matches the front-end, which we highly recommend when possible.
With a separate window for the editor content, it’s possible for the selection in the editor to remain visible while also having a (collapsed) selection in the editor UIUIUser interface, for example an input field for a URLURLA specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org.
We currently only iframe new editors. While the new template editor has been iframed, the post editor remains unchanged. We do this to gradually test how existing blocks from plugins work within an iframed editor, since there are cases where a block could look broken or (less likely) error. We hereby urge pluginPluginA plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party authors to test their blocks with the new template editor and contact us if they need help to adjust blocks to work in the iframe.
Document and window
The iframe will have a different document and window than the admin page, which is now the parent window. Editor scripts are loaded in the admin page, so accessing the document or window to do something with the content will no longer work.
Most blocks written in ReactReactReact is a JavaScript library that makes it easy to reason about, construct, and maintain stateless and stateful user interfaces. https://reactjs.org/. should continue to work properly, except if you rely on document or window. To fix, you need to create ref to access the relative document (ownerDocument) or window (defaultView). Regardless of the iframe, it is good practice to do this and avoid the use of globals.
If you attach event handlers, remember that the useEffect callback will not be called if the ref changes, so it is good practice to use the new useRefEffectAPIAPIAn API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways., which will call the given callback if the ref change in addition to any dependencies passed.
For the editor, scripts such as jQuery are loaded in the parent window (admin page), which is fine. When using these to interact with a block in the iframe, you should pass the element reference.
But what if the library is using the global window or document and it’s out of your control?
Submit an issue or PR for the library to use ownerDocument and defaultView instead of the globals. Ideally, any library should allow initialisation with an element in an iframe as the target. It’s never impossible. Feel free to contact us to mention the issue.
In the meantime, you can use the script that is loaded inside the iframe. We’ve loaded all front-end scripts in the iframe to fix these cases, but note that ideally you shouldn’t use scripts loaded in the iframe at all. You can use defaultView to access the script.
const ref = useRefEffect( ( element ) => {
const { ownerDocument } = element;
const { defaultView } = ownerDocument;
// Use the script loaded in the iframe.
// Script are loaded asynchronously, so check is the script is loaded.
// After the dependencies have loaded, the block will re-render.
if ( ! defaultView.jQuery ) {
return;
}
defaultView.jQuery( element ).masonry( … );
return () => {
defaultView.jQuery( element ).masonry( 'destroy' );
}
} );
const props = useBlockProps( { ref } );
And that’s it! In summary, any problem that a block might have in the iframe is caused by using the document or window global at the root of it, either in the block’s code or a third party library. Ideally, all code uses the ownerDocument and defaultView relative properties.
WordPress 5.8 introduces Global Settings and Global Styles. They allow theme authors to control and style the available features in the editor and the different blocks using a theme.jsonJSONJSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML..
By using a theme.json file, in addition to the Global styles and settings capabilities, theme authors opt-in into the layout feature for blockBlockBlock is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. containers.
Layout config
Historically, themes had the responsibility to provide CSSCSSCascading Style Sheets. styles in order to support aligning content (left, right). With the introduction of the block editor in WordPress 5.0, new alignments has been added to the mix (wide, full). In addition to that, the block editor allowed users to use container blocks (group, columns blocks) which potentially can change how their inner blocks are positioned and aligned. Taking all these variations into consideration has become a very difficult task for theme authors. To address these issues, WordPress 5.8 introduces the layout feature and config.
How do I migrate my theme
Themes that have a centered content area, need to define a layout setting in their `theme.json` file:
The block-editor will automatically read this config and provide the corresponding styles in the editor. It will allow all alignments to work properly without requiring the `add_theme_support( ‘align-wide’ )` call.
Themes are still required to provide the corresponding styles in the frontend of their sites, something like:
It’s not possible for WordPress to generate these styles automatically for all themes because the entry-content className in the example above is not mandatory and may not exist. In the future, with the introduction of the upcoming block themes, these styles won’t be needed anymore.
Nested Blocks
For themes with the layout config enabled, container blocks (like group blocks) do not automatically inherit the layout config. Meaning the blocks added inside the containers will by default take all the available space and not have any wide/full alignments options unless the user defines the wide and content sizes for that particular container block or “inherits” the config from the default layout.
This also means that themers can drop any alignment specific CSS that was added specifically to support nested blocks.
BetaBetaA pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. 4 released last week and RCrelease candidateOne of the final stages in the version release cycle, this version signals the potential to be a final release to the public. Also see alpha (beta). 1 yesterday and now under hard string freeze
Focus now shifts fully to RC phase with RC 2 release in 6 days on Tuesday, July 6th
Also working to publish Dev Notes, Field GuideField guideThe field guide is a type of blogpost published on Make/Core during the release candidate phase of the WordPress release cycle. The field guide generally lists all the dev notes published during the beta cycle. This guide is linked in the about page of the corresponding version of WordPress, in the release post and in the HelpHub version page. and email to pluginPluginA plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party/theme authors
Do you have something to propose for the agenda, or a specific item relevant to the usual agenda items above?
Please leave a comment, and say whether or not you’ll be in the chat, so the group can either give you the floor or bring up your topic for you accordingly.
This meeting happens in the #core channel. To join the meeting, you’ll need an account on the Making WordPress Slack.
WordPress 5.8 introduces a new headerHeaderThe header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes. available for pluginPluginA plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party authors. This allows third-party plugins to avoid accidentally being overwritten with an update of a plugin of a similar name from the WordPress.orgWordPress.orgThe community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ Plugin Directory.
Previously, any custom plugin which used the same slug than a plugin hosted on WordPress.org was taking a significant risk of being overwritten by an update of the latter.
WordPress 5.8 introduces a new Update URIplugin header field. If the value of this new field matches any URI other than https://wordpress.org/plugins/{$slug}/ or w.org/plugin/{$slug}, WordPress will not attempt to update it.
If set, the Update URI header field should be a valid URI and have a unique hostname.
Please note that authors of plugins hosted by WordPress.org don’t need to use this new header.
Update URI: false also works, and unless there is some code handling the false hostname (see the hook introduced below), the plugin will not be updated.
If the header is used on a w.org hosted plugin, the WordPress.org APIAPIAn API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. will only return updates for the plugin if it matches the following format:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/{$slug}/
w.org/plugin/{$slug}
If the header has any other value, the API will not return any result. It will ignore the plugin for update purposes.
Additionally, WordPress 5.8 introduce the update_plugins_{$hostname}filterFilterFilters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output., which third-party plugins can use to offer updates for a given hostname.
This new hook filters the update response for a given plugin hostname. The dynamic portion of the hook name, $hostname, refers to the hostname of the URI specified in the Update URI header field.
The hook has four arguments:
$update: The plugin update data with the latest details. Default false.
$plugin_data: The list of headers provided by the plugin.
$plugin_file: The plugin filename.
$locales: Installed locales to look translations for.
They can be used to filter the update response in multiple use cases.
BlockBlockBlock is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. based WidgetWidgetA WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user. Editor.
Navigation Block & Navigation Editor.
Full Site Editing.
Mobile Team.
Task Coordination.
Open Floor.
If you are not able to attend the meeting, you are encouraged to share anything relevant for the discussion:
If you have anything to share for the Task Coordination section, please leave it as a comment on this post.
If you have anything to propose for the agenda or other specific items related to those listed above, please leave a comment below.
Keeping deprecated JavaScriptJavaScriptJavaScript or JS is an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers. WordPress makes extensive use of JS for a better user experience. While PHP is executed on the server, JS executes within a user’s browser. https://www.javascript.com/. APIs around has a cost on performance and bundle size. This means at some point we need to consider removing some of the very old deprecated APIs, especially the ones with very low usage. WordPress 5.8 does remove two APIs that were deprecated on WordPress 5.2.
EditorGlobalKeyboardShortcuts component, this was a component used to define some keyboard shortcuts of the blockBlockBlock is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. editor, it was not really meant to be used by third-party developers. We verified that it’s not used by any pluginPluginA plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party in the repository but if you rely on this component, it should be safe to just replace with VisualEditorGlobalKeyboardShortcuts.
The hasUploadPermissions selector from the core store. We contacted all the three plugins in the repository that were still using this APIAPIAn API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways.. If you’re still relying on this selector on a private site/plugin, it can be safely replaced with select( 'core' ).canUser( 'create', 'media' )
Removed blocks
Before WordPress 5.0 and in the very early days of the GutenbergGutenbergThe Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ plugin, we used to have a block called Subheading, this block has never been included in WordPress CoreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. as stable, it was hidden and deprecated very early. We expect its usage to be very small. WordPress 5.8 removes the code of this block meaning that if you open content relying on that block in the editor, it will ask you to fallback to the HTMLHTMLHyperText Markup Language. The semantic scripting language primarily used for outputting content in web browsers. block instead. We don’t expect this to have a noticeable impact on the frontend of your site.
The following is a snapshot of some of the changes to the REST APIREST APIThe REST API is an acronym for the RESTful Application Program Interface (API) that uses HTTP requests to GET, PUT, POST and DELETE data. It is how the front end of an application (think “phone app” or “website”) can communicate with the data store (think “database” or “file system”) https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/. in WordPress 5.8. For more details, see the full list of closed tickets.
Widgets
WordPress 5.8 sees the introduction of a new blockBlockBlock is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience.-based widgets editor and with it the creation of several REST API endpoints dedicated to widgetWidgetA WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user. management. Before diving in to how the new endpoints operate, I’d like to provide some background about how widgets work that should make the following sections more clear.
Instance Widgets
The predominant way to create widgets is to subclass the WP_Widget base class and register the widget with register_widget. These are referred to as “multi” widgets. These widgets have multiple instances that are identified by their number, an incrementing integer for each widget type.
Each instance has its own setting values. These are stored and fetched by WP_Widget which allows for the REST API to include these values. However, since a widget’s instance can contain arbitrary data, for example a DateTime object, the REST API cannot always serialize a widget to JSONJSONJSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML.. As such, a widget’s data is always serialized using the PHPPHPThe web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higherserialize function and then base64 encoded. This data is also exposed with a hash value which is a wp_hash signature of this value to prevent clients from sending arbitrary data to be deserialized with unserialize.
For widgets that can be safely accept and expose their instance data as JSON, pass the show_instance_in_rest flag in the $widget_options parameter.
class ExampleWidget extends WP_Widget {
...
/**
* Sets up the widget
*/
public function __construct() {
$widget_ops = array(
// ...other options here
'show_instance_in_rest' => true,
// ...other options here
);
parent::__construct( 'example_widget', 'ExampleWidget', $widget_ops );
}
...
}
Reference Widgets
Far less common, but still supported, are widgets that are registered using wp_register_sidebar_widget and wp_register_widget_control directly. These are referred to as “reference”, “function-based”, or “non-multi” widgets. These widgets can store their data in an arbitrary location. As such, their instance values are never included in the REST API.
Widget Types
Accessible via /wp/v2/widget-types, the widget types endpoint describes the different widget types that are registered on the server. The endpoint is accessible to users who have permission to edit_theme_options. By default, this is limited to Administrator users.
Response Format
{
"id": "pages",
"name": "Pages",
"description": "A list of your site’s Pages.",
"is_multi": true,
"classname": "widget_pages",
"_links": {
"collection": [
{
"href": "https://trunk.test/wp-json/wp/v2/widget-types"
}
],
"self": [
{
"href": "https://trunk.test/wp-json/wp/v2/widget-types/pages"
}
]
}
}
Encode Endpoint
Multi widgets have access to the /wp/v2/widget-types/<widget>/encode endpoint. This endpoint is used to convert htmlHTMLHyperText Markup Language. The semantic scripting language primarily used for outputting content in web browsers. form data for the widget to the next instance for the widget, render the widget form, and render the widget preview.
For example, let’s say we want to interact with the MetaMetaMeta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. widget. First, we’ll want to request the widget form from the server.
POST /wp/v2/widget-types/meta/encode
{
"instance": {},
"number": 1
}
For now, let’s assume we’re working with a new widget. The instance is empty because this is a new widget, so we’ll be rendering an empty form. The number argument can be omitted, but including one is recommended to provide stable input ids. You’ll receive a response similar to this. The widget preview has been snipped for brevity.
The provided form can then be rendered and edited by the user. When you want to render a new preview or are ready to begin saving, call the encode endpoint again with the url encoded form data and the instance value returned from the first response.
The REST API will call the widget’s update function to calculate the new instance based on the provided form data. The instance object can then be used to save a widget via the widgets endpoint.
The widgets endpoint is used for performing CRUDCRUDCreate, read, update and delete, the four basic functions of storing data. (More on Wikipedia.) operations on the saved widgets. Like the widget types endpoint, the widgets endpoints required the edit_theme_options capability to access.
To retrieve widgets, make a GET request to the /wp/v2/widgets endpoint. The sidebar parameter can be used to limit the response to widgets belonging to the requested sidebarSidebarA sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme..
To create a widget, for instance the widget from our previous example, make a POST request to the /wp/v2/widgets endpoint. The instance is the same value returned from the encode endpoint. The id_base is the unique identifier for the widget type and sidebar is the id of the sidebar to assign the widget to. Both are required.
Since the meta widget (and all other built-in widgets) is registered with show_instance_in_rest enabled you could bypass the encode endpoint and use instance.raw instead. For example, if we wanted to update the widget to have a new title, we could make the following PUT request to /wp/v2/widgets/meta-1.
A PUT request can also be made to update the sidebar assigned to a widget by passing a new sidebar id in the request.
To delete a widget, send a DELETE request to the individual widget route. By default, deleting a widget will move a widget to the Inactive Widgets area. To permanently delete a widget, use the force parameter. For example: DELETE /wp/v2/widgets/meta-1?force=true.
Sidebars Endpoints
Found under /wp/v2/sidebars, the sidebars endpoint is used to manage a site’s registered sidebars (widget areas) and their assigned widgets. For example, the following is the response for the first footer area in the Twenty Twenty theme.
{
"id": "sidebar-1",
"name": "Footer #1",
"description": "Widgets in this area will be displayed in the first column in the footer.",
"class": "",
"before_widget": "<div class=\"widget %2$s\"><div class=\"widget-content\">",
"after_widget": "</div></div>",
"before_title": "<h2 class=\"widget-title subheading heading-size-3\">",
"after_title": "</h2>",
"status": "active",
"widgets": [
"recent-posts-2",
"recent-comments-2",
"meta-1"
],
"_links": {
"collection": [
{
"href": "https://trunk.test/wp-json/wp/v2/sidebars"
}
],
"self": [
{
"href": "https://trunk.test/wp-json/wp/v2/sidebars/sidebar-1"
}
],
"wp:widget": [
{
"embeddable": true,
"href": "https://trunk.test/wp-json/wp/v2/widgets?sidebar=sidebar-1"
}
],
"curies": [
{
"name": "wp",
"href": "https://api.w.org/{rel}",
"templated": true
}
]
}
}
The widgets property contains an ordered list of widget ids. While all other properties are readonly, the widgets property can be used to reorder a sidebar’s assigned widgets. Any widget ids omitted when updating the sidebar will be assigned to the Inactive Widgets sidebar area.
For example, making a PUT request to /wp/v2/sidebars/sidebar-1 with the following body will remove the Recent Comments widget, and move the Meta widget to the top of the sidebar.
PUT /wp/v2/sidebars/sidebar-1
{
"widgets": [
"meta-1",
"recent-posts-2"
]
}
For more information about the changes to widgets in 5.8, check out the Block-based Widgets Editor dev notedev noteEach important change in WordPress Core is documented in a developers note, (usually called dev note). Good dev notes generally include a description of the change, the decision that led to this change, and a description of how developers are supposed to work with that change. Dev notes are published on Make/Core blog during the beta phase of WordPress release cycle. Publishing dev notes is particularly important when plugin/theme authors and WordPress developers need to be aware of those changes.In general, all dev notes are compiled into a Field Guide at the beginning of the release candidate phase..
By default, a post must contain at least one of the requested terms to be included in the response. As of [51026], the REST API accepts a new operator property that can be set to AND to require a post to contain all of the requested terms.
For example, /wp/v2/posts?tags[terms]=1,2,3&tags[operator]=AND will return posts that have tags with the ids of 1, 2, and 3.
WordPress 5.8 introduces a new blockBlockBlock is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience.-based widgets editor to the Widgets screen (Appearance → Widgets) and CustomizerCustomizerTool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings. (Appearance → Customize → Widgets). The new editor allows users to add blocks to their widgetWidgetA WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user. areas using the familiar block editor interface introduced in WordPress 5.0. This gives users powerful new ways to customise their sites using the rich library of coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. and third party blocks. Existing widgets and third party widgets will continue to work and can be used alongside blocks.
Opting out of the block-based widgets editor
The block-based widgets editor is enabled in WordPress 5.8 by default. There are several ways to restore the classic editor:
A theme author may include remove_theme_support( 'widgets-block-editor' ). Learn more.
A site administrator may use the new use_widgets_block_editorfilterFilterFilters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output.. Learn more.
The widgets.phpadminadmin(and super admin) screen (Appearance → Widgets) now loads a block-based widgets editor which exists in the @wordpress/edit-widgets package.
The editor is built using ReactReactReact is a JavaScript library that makes it easy to reason about, construct, and maintain stateless and stateful user interfaces. https://reactjs.org/. and is similar to the editor used for posts and pages (@wordpress/edit-post) and uses many of the same subsystems: @wordpress/interface and @wordpress/components for UIUIUser interface, @wordpress/block-editor for block editing, @wordpress/data and @wordpress/core-data for persisting changes, and so on.
A new filterable function, wp_use_widgets_block_editor(), is used by widgets.php to determine whether to load the new block-based editor or the classic editor.
The Widgets screen is extendable via block editor APIs such as registerPlugin, registerBlockType, registerBlockVariation, and so on.
The Widgets screen uses new REST APIREST APIThe REST API is an acronym for the RESTful Application Program Interface (API) that uses HTTP requests to GET, PUT, POST and DELETE data. It is how the front end of an application (think “phone app” or “website”) can communicate with the data store (think “database” or “file system”) https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/. endpoints which are detailed in a seperate dev note.
New Customizer control
The Widgets section in the Customizer (Appearance → Customize → Widgets) now loads a new control (WP_Sidebar_Block_Editor_Control) which contains an embedded block-based widgets editor that exists in the @wordpress/customize-widgets package.
The editor is built using React and uses @wordpress/block-editor and @wordpress/components to implement its block editing interface. It does not use @wordpress/data or @wordpress/core-data to persist changes. Instead, the existing Customizer JavaScript API is used.
A new filterable function, wp_use_widgets_block_editor(), is used by WP_Customize_Manager to determine whether or not to log the new block-based editor control or the classic editor control.
The block-based widgets editor in the Customizer is extendable via block editor APIs such as registerBlockType, registerBlockVariation, and so on.
New block: Legacy Widget
Existing widgets and third party widgets can be edited in the block-based widgets editor via the new Legacy Widget block. This block has an identifier of core/legacy-widget and exists in the @wordpress/widgets package. The Legacy Widget block is compatible with most third party widgets.
Broadly speaking, the Legacy Widget block has three states:
Select. When first inserted, the block displays a list of widgets available to choose from. The list can be customised using the widget_types_to_hide_from_legacy_widget_block filter.
Edit. When selected, the block displays the widget’s control form fields. This is determined by the widget’s WP_Widget::form() implementation.
Preview. When not selected, the block displays a preview of how the widget will look once saved. This is determined by the widget’s WP_Widget::widget() implementation. A “No preview available.” message is automatically shown when widget() does not output any meaningful HTMLHTMLHyperText Markup Language. The semantic scripting language primarily used for outputting content in web browsers.. Learn more.
The Legacy Widget block is not available in other block editors including the post editor, though this can be enabled for advanced use cases.
New widget: Block
Blocks added to widget areas are persisted using the same widget storage mechanism added in WordPress 2.8. Under the hood, each block is serialised into HTML and stored in a block widget. This is represented by a new WP_Widget_Block subclass that extends WP_Widget. A block widget is a specialised case of the HTML widget and works very similarly.
If blocks are added to a widget area, and then the block-based widgets editor is disabled, the blocks will remain visible on the frontend and in the classic widgets screen.
Tips to prepare for the new block-based widgets editor
( function ( $ ) {
$( document ).on( 'widget-added', function ( $event, $control ) {
$control.find( '.change-password' ).on( 'change', function () {
var isChecked = $( this ).prop( 'checked' );
$control.find( '.password' ).toggleClass( 'hidden', ! isChecked );
} );
} );
} )( jQuery );
Use block_categories_all instead of block_categories
The block_categories filter has been deprecated and will only be called in the post and page block editor. PluginPluginA plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party developers that wish to support the widgets block editor should use the new block_categories_all filter which is called in all editors. See #52920 for more details.
Allow migrating from widgets to blocks
Many core and third party widgets have a functionally equivalent block. For example, core’s Recent Posts widget is analogous to core’s Latest Posts block.
In order to avoid duplicate functionality, is is recommended that plugin authors provide a way for users to convert their existing widgets to any equivalent block. WordPress 5.8 provides a mechanism for doing this using block transforms:
Configure your widget to display its instance in the REST API by setting show_instance_in_rest to true in $widget_options.
Add a block transform to your block from the core/legacy-widget block.
Hide your widget from the Legacy Widget block using the widget_types_to_hide_from_legacy_widget_block filter.
Many legacy widgets call the wp.editor.initialize()JavaScriptJavaScriptJavaScript or JS is an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers. WordPress makes extensive use of JS for a better user experience. While PHP is executed on the server, JS executes within a user’s browser. https://www.javascript.com/. function to instantiate a TinyMCE editor. If a plugin or block uses the @wordpress/editor package and enqueues wp-editor as a script dependency, this will re-define the wp.editor global, often resulting in a wp.editor.initialize is undefined error.
Don’t use functions like is_admin() that won’t work in a REST API request
Because the Legacy Widget block makes REST API requests in order to render widgets, admin-only functions like is_admin() and is_plugin_available() are not available.
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