Hello all, I must first preface this by saying this is not a post to get into the specifics of what’s going on with the community right now.
I am no longer contributing to WordPress as things stand. As a result of me stepping down, we need new leadership to take Fields API An 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. to where it needs to be for WordPress core Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress..
I have believed over the past decade that we need a Fields API within WordPress itself. I still believe this and many others do too. I’m hopeful someone will step up and hop into the #core-fields channel on the .org Slack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. to continue coordinating things from where they are. We need someone with passion and the ability to bring everyone to the table.
The vision as it was during WCUS week before things got sidetracked:
- Data Views are awesome and there are things like the PHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 7.4 or higher DataKit which prove how we can build upon them without leaving many PHP developers behind
- Data Forms are really just getting started in core / Gutenberg 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/ and it’s important that work is done to open them up to consume configurations from JSON 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. or the REST 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/. for screens
- Both Data Views and Data Forms will eventually spread across the rest of the UI User interface like the User edit screen and plenty of other forms — this means the Fields API itself will be spread everywhere if we become integrated properly
- We should start with the Quick Edit experience which is currently an experiment in Gutenberg you can enable
- We should offer a PHP API to register ‘forms’, ‘sections’, and ‘fields’ for those forms — however we get there
- We should include those registered configs in the REST API for the post type
A great deal of research was done originally and Fields API has been through a number of concepts:
There’s so much more I wish I could share in my vision on this and spend lots of time with images + video screencast showing you through what I was extremely excited about at WCUS.
Finally, I want to say thank you to everyone who believed in me and the project. Thank you to many of the Gutenberg contributors who spent their time with me at WCUS contributor day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. unblocking our overall goal. They were on board with this. I will always be a fan of those contributors doing their best to make WordPress better.
We were so close here, I believe that if someone steps up then we could see some semblance of a Fields API finally committed to WordPress 6.8. I just won’t be there to enjoy the fruits of that labor.
Goodbye everyone, but I won’t be that far away. I’ll be rooting for those of you making WordPress the best it can be and choosing your own paths going forward. Who knows what the future holds, I may return one day in the future if circumstances change for me personally.
#fields-api
