As first introduced in the Image Widget Merge Proposal, WordPress 4.8 includes media widgets (#32417) for not only images (#39993) but also video (#39994) and audio (#39995), on top of an extensibleExtensible This is the ability to add additional functionality to the code. Plugins extend the WordPress core software. base for introducing additional media widgets in the future, such as for galleries and playlists. To quote [40640]:

The last time a new widgetWidget A 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. was introduced, Vuvuzelas were a thing, Angry Birds started taking over phones, and WordPress stopped shipping with Kubrick. Seven years and 17 releases without new widgets have been enough, time to spice up your sidebarSidebar A 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.!

Since widgets are a very old part of WordPress (since 2.2), widgets in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. have been very much entirely built using PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 7.4 or higher with some Ajax sprinkled on top. In the time since WP_Widget was introduced in 2.8, WordPress has made dramatic shifts toward developing interfaces in JavaScriptJavaScript JavaScript 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/., including with the CustomizerCustomizer Tool 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. in 3.4 and the Media Library in 3.5, and more recently with the focus on the REST APIREST API The 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/. and the editor (Gutenberg).

Given that the media widgets are naturally interfacing with the media library JSJS JavaScript, a web scripting language typically executed in the browser. Often used for advanced user interfaces and behaviors., it is necessary that the media widgets make use of JavaScript to construct their UIUI User interface instead of relying on PHP. The media widgets fully reuse the existing media modal frames for not only selecting the media to display but also to edit all of its properties: attachments can be selected from the media library, while external media can be inserted by URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org.

Initial groundwork for shimming JavaScript into widgets was added in 3.9 via the widget-added and widget-updated events, which are also being utilized in 4.8 with the Addition of TinyMCE to the Text Widget. A more recent proposal for making JavaScript more of a first class citizen can be found in #33507 and the media widgets incorporate some of its patterns that were also prototyped in the JS Widgets pluginPlugin A 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. The media widgets make use of a Backbone View to manage the widget control’s UI and a Backbone Model for reading and manipulating the widget instance data.

Base Media Widget

PHP: wp-includes/widgets/class-wp-widget-media.php
JS: wp-admin/js/widgets/media-widgets.js

The three widgets all extend a WP_Widget_Media PHP abstract class; in JS the Backbone view wp.mediaWidgets.MediaWidgetControl and wp.mediaWidgets.MediaWidgetModel are extended. A unique aspect of how the media widgets work is how instance data is validated and sanitized. Normally widgets utilize procedural code to sanitize instances via a subclassed WP_Widget::update() method. The media widgets, however, make use of a REST API schema returned from WP_Widget_Media::get_instance_schema() to sanitize instances declaratively. The WP_Widget_Media::update() method iterates over the schema and uses it to sanitize and validate the instance properties. (Adding schemas to the base WP_Widget class is also proposed in #35574.) The JSONJSON JSON, 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. schema is extended to include a couple custom properties: media_prop provides the media JS property name that the widget instance maps, and the should_preview_update flag indicates whether a change to that prop should cause the control preview to re-render (this would be retired with a ReactReact React is a JavaScript library that makes it easy to reason about, construct, and maintain stateless and stateful user interfaces. https://reactjs.org/. rewrite and/or leveraging of corresponding blocks in GutenbergGutenberg The 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/).

The WP_Widget_Media abstract class has one abstract method which subclasses must implement: WP_Widget_Media::render_media(). This is the method that WP_Widget_Media::widget() calls with the $instance props to render the media for a given widget media type. Before the props are passed to the method, the $instance is applied through  widget_{$id_base}_instance filters.

A media widget subclass should output additional JS templates as the control needs by extending WP_Widget_Media::render_control_template_scripts(). Scripts that the widget control requires can be enqueued by extending WP_Widget_Media::enqueue_admin_scripts(); this is also where the PHP exports can be done with calls to wp_add_inline_script().

The REST API schema is exported from PHP to JS on the subclassed MediaWidgetModel prototypes. Other properties on the prototypes which should be extended include l10n and mime_type. The model subclasses are registered by assigning them to the wp.mediaWidgets.modelConstructors object, keyed by the widget ID base (e.g. media_image, media_video, etc). In the same way, the Backbone View wp.mediaWidgets.MediaWidgetControl is subclassed and registered by adding to the wp.mediaWidgets.controlConstructors object, also keyed by widget ID base. This is similar to how control types are registered in the Customizer.

The MediaWidgetControl and MediaWidgetModel will be instantiated once a widget control is expanded. Their instances will be then added to the wp.mediaWidgets.widgetControls object and wp.mediaWidgets.modelCollection respectively.

There is a subclass of a media controller and a couple media views in the wp.mediaWidgets namespace. These extensions to media classes are needed due to current limitations in media extensibility. They may be removed/reduced with improvements in #40427.

As with the incorporation of TinyMCE into the Text widget, the incorporation of the media library into the media widget has necessitated constructing the widget’s form fields differently than how they are normally done. Widgets in core have historically utilized static HTMLHTML HyperText Markup Language. The semantic scripting language primarily used for outputting content in web browsers. for their control form fields. Every time a user hits “Save” the form fields get sent in an Ajax request which passes them to the WP_Widget::update() method and then the Ajax response sends back the output of WP_Widget::form() which then replaces the entire form. (Note widgets in the Customizer behave differently since there is no Save button in the widget, as updates are synced and previewed as changes are made; read more about Live Widget Previews.) This worked for static HTML forms in the past, but in the case of the media widgets the UI built with JavaScript instead of server-side PHP.

To avoid having to rebuild the media preview every time the user hits Save on the adminadmin (and super admin) screen, the media widget puts its UI elements outside of the container that is “managed” by the server which gets replaced with each save. (A similar approach has also been employed by the new TinyMCE-extended Text widget in 4.8.) Since core does not yet represent a widget’s state in a JavaScript model (again see #33507), the media widget syncs its MediaWidgetModel props with hidden inputs that get rendered by WP_Media_Widget::form() in order to be sent to the server for preview and saving. The container for the media widget’s fields is .media-widget-control and the traditional container for a widget’s input fields as rendered by WP_Widget::form() is .widget-content:

For examples of how to implement media widgets, see the three implementations included in 4.8 as follows.

Image Widget

PHP: wp-includes/widgets/class-wp-widget-media-image.php
JS: wp-admin/js/widgets/media-image-widget.js

Video Widget

PHP: wp-includes/widgets/class-wp-widget-media-video.php
JS: wp-admin/js/widgets/media-video-widget.js

The video widget allows for embeddable video formats to be selected from the media library or linked to externally by URL. In addition, URLs to YouTube or Vimeo may also be provided since the video shortcodeShortcode A shortcode is a placeholder used within a WordPress post, page, or widget to insert a form or function generated by a plugin in a specific location on your site. logic supports rendering them via MediaElement.js. It is possible for plugins to add support for additional oEmbed providers via extending the video widget control’s isHostedVideo method; for more, see the Jetpack PR for adding VideoPress support.

Note that the presence of format-specific fields is dependent on what is returned by wp_get_video_extensions().

Audio Widget

PHP: wp-includes/widgets/class-wp-widget-media-audio.php
JS: wp-admin/js/widgets/media-audio-widget.js

The audio widget allows for embeddable audio formats to be selected from the media library or linked to externally by URL. Note that there are no oEmbed audio formats supported since the audio shortcode logic only supports rendering players for actual audio files.

Note that the presence of format-specific fields is dependent on what is returned by wp_get_audio_extensions().

Default Themes Updates

Themes that add custom styles to the MediaElement.js player (namely Twenty Thirteen and Twenty Fourteen) were updated from just styling it within syndicated content, to also include instances within widgets. Most themes don’t restrict styles for captioned images or media players to just post content, that is, limit CSS selectors to classes output by post_class(). If your theme does, make sure to either remove that constraint or include a .widget selector.

Conclusion

The work on the new media widgets in core was conducted in the Core Media Widgets plugin and on its corresponding wp-core-media-widgets GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ repo. Many of the decisions that were made in the architecture of the feature can be found there in the GitHub issues and pull requests.

Keep in mind that the media widgets will likely undergo many more changes with the incorporation of the Gutenberg editor, and that widgets themselves will likely see many changes to align with Gutenberg’s editor blocks which are now being prototyped. Essentially if you can insert a given type of blockBlock Block 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. into the editor, there should also be a widget available for representing the same content.

#4-8, #dev-notes, #media-widgets