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[PoC] Patterns: try partial syncing of inner blocks #56348

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glendaviesnz
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What?

This is an exploration to see if it will be possible to partially sync a block that has innerBlocks as part of the work around #53705.

Why?

The initial work around partial syncing is focusing on simple block content like a paragraph's content attribute or an image's src. but we need to make sure that the APIs being used to this will scale to allowing blocks with innerBlocks content to also be partially synced.

How?

Uses the handling of the patterns innerBlocks implemented in #56235 to detect changes to a patterns inner blocks and save the serialized changes into the patterns attributes

Testing Instructions

  • Currently only works with List block
  • Enable Connections experiment
  • Create a synced pattern and add a list block
  • In the Connections panel connect the list to Pattern attributes
  • Add the pattern to a post and edit the list items and make sure changes display correctly in frontend

This is a very rough prototype, and will most likely have bugs 😄

Screenshots or screencast

partial-inner.mp4

@glendaviesnz glendaviesnz added [Type] Enhancement A suggestion for improvement. [Status] In Progress Tracking issues with work in progress [Feature] Patterns A collection of blocks that can be synced (previously reusable blocks) or unsynced labels Nov 20, 2023
@glendaviesnz glendaviesnz self-assigned this Nov 20, 2023
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This pull request has changed or added PHP files. Please confirm whether these changes need to be synced to WordPress Core, and therefore featured in the next release of WordPress.

If so, it is recommended to create a new Trac ticket and submit a pull request to the WordPress Core Github repository soon after this pull request is merged.

If you're unsure, you can always ask for help in the #core-editor channel in WordPress Slack.

Thank you! ❤️

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❔ lib/experimental/blocks.php

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Total Size: 1.7 MB

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@glendaviesnz glendaviesnz marked this pull request as draft November 21, 2023 00:06
@@ -153,6 +154,12 @@ function gutenberg_render_block_connections( $block_content, $block, $block_inst
$attribute_value['value']
);

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The following will need some work. Currently, there is no common attribute that identifies what the outer wrapper tag is across blocks using innerBlocks. This currently just gets the first tag in the content, which works for lists, but may not for other blocks, so we may need to add an additional attribute to the blocks to clearly identify the innerBlocks wrapper.

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glendaviesnz commented Nov 21, 2023

The key things that would need to be worked through with this approach:

  • Adding a way of being able to clearly identify the innerBlocks wrapper tag for those blocks that opt in
  • We need to decide if the parent pattern attributes are the place to store innerBlocks content changes as the attributes could quickly become very bloated. Another suggested approach we could explore further here.
  • There will be performance implications, particularly with large deeply nested patterns so it would need some work on optimizing the update process

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@gziolo, @SantosGuillamot just an FYI - although the initial release of partial syncing may not included innerBlocks we wanted to check that there were at least some ways forward to allow for this. While this PR may not end up as part of the final solution, it does seem to indicate that it will be possible to scale the connections approach to allow for innerBlocks.

@talldan
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talldan commented Nov 21, 2023

It looks promising. Probably need to think about how the data is serialized, as it seems as the moment the block markup is stored? I think that's something that would have to change, as otherwise there's a mix of data types being pushed into dynamic data (json style data for normal blocks, and serialized html for inner blocks).

If it were just an array of block types and the subset of attributes that seems pretty close, and that approach might also work for other block binding types like custom fields.

The other part to think about is how the user might configure this, especially as patterns and custom fields will have different UIs for declaring bindings.

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talldan commented Nov 21, 2023

Also worth noting some other constraints with this approach:

  • Paragraphs would have to be in a container like a group block if the end user of a pattern wants to be able to add multiple of them (which I think is probably ok)
  • List and gallery are pretty easy as they only support one inner block type, but for container blocks that support multiple or any inner block type things are a bit different. It's not so much a technical issue, more about what the creator of the pattern wants to allow the end user to do with the pattern. (a group that might only support paragraphs is a good example, groups don't usually work that way, but in a specific pattern that might be what the creator allows)

@glendaviesnz
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We prrobably need to think about how the data is serialized, as it seems as the moment the block markup is stored?
If it were just an array of block types and the subset of attributes that seems pretty close

The problem with innerBlocks is that the block type and attributes are enough on the editor end, but not enough in order to get the html block content on the server for static blocks as we don't have access to the save function. The only way I could see for this to work on the server end was to save the markup - but I agree it would be nice if there was another way!

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List and gallery are pretty easy as they only support one inner block type, but for container blocks that support multiple or any inner block type things are a bit different. It's not so much a technical issue, more about what the creator of the pattern wants to allow the end user to do with the pattern. (a group that might only support paragraphs is a good example, groups don't usually work that way, but in a specific pattern that might be what the creator allows)

Yes, this needs a bit of thought about how the locking mechanisms might need to be extended to allow more fine-grained control about what can and can't be edited with container blocks.

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talldan commented Nov 21, 2023

The problem with innerBlocks is that the block type and attributes are enough on the editor end, but not enough in order to get the html block content on the server for static blocks as we don't have access to the save function. The only way I could see for this to work on the server end was to save the markup - but I agree it would be nice if there was another way!

I would imagine using the same mechanisms that block bindings do use—saving the markup and using the HTML API to rewrite parts. You end up with the same complications we have for block bindings generally—what happens when blocks are rearranged around and might mismatch the content data, but this is a problem already being solved.

You could start thinking about the problem as though there are possibly two different ways for inner blocks to work in a partially synced pattern:

  • freeform, where any inner blocks can exist. The normal key system (whatever is settled on) probably works fine for this. The pattern creator could reasonably expect this type of inner block to be locked down (the end user of the pattern can't add or remove inner blocks in the instance), so I think this would be a natural extension of how partial syncing works already.
  • list-style inner blocks (list block, gallery block, groups of paragraphs). This is slightly different in that the pattern creator expects the end user to insert/remove blocks from the instance (use case: a list of ingredients in a recipe). Maybe there are restrictions that only a single inner block type is supported and these inner blocks can't be styled (or can only be given one uniform style). That would mean that from a technical point of view we don't care if the inner blocks are re-arranged as there can be no mis-match with the content data.

@glendaviesnz
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glendaviesnz commented Nov 21, 2023

I would imagine using the same mechanisms that block bindings do use—saving the markup and using the HTML API to rewrite parts.

That is essentially what is being done on the frontend, the block markup is parsed to straight html and inserted in the content using the HMTL API. The complication with innerblocks is we need to be able to regenerate potentially complex block structures for the editor context, which would be a bit of a mission if all we have is the html markup. One alternative would be a json structure that has the block attributes for the editor context and an innerContent property that contains the html markup for the frontend, but this might be even more verbose than the block markup - would be interesting to compare for size and performance.

Having either the block markup, or block attributes saved for innerblocks rather than just the markup also partly gets around some of the issues with block changes as migrations/deprecations will run I think when the blocks are reparsed in the editor.

Once we get some more of the simple connections work done and circle back to this it should be reasonably easy to experiment with a few different approaches to storing the innerBlocks changes. When we get to that point then looking at it from the two angles you mention will be useful I think.

@kevin940726 kevin940726 force-pushed the try/partial-sync-no-monkey-patching branch from 6befb37 to dc91763 Compare November 24, 2023 07:58
@gziolo
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gziolo commented Nov 24, 2023

How could be the same case implemented if we were to introduce a new Repeater block that would have to be used inside Block Patterns whenever we want to allow multiple instances of the same block? Examples in pseudocode:

<List>
    <Repeater min="2" max="5">
       <ListItem />
    </Repeater>
</List>
<Gallery>
   <Repeater min="4">
      <Image />
   </Repeater>
</Gallery>

What other use case would you like to cover?

@glendaviesnz
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How could be the same case implemented if we were to introduce a new Repeater block

Interesting idea, will circle back and take a look at that once we have the simple content cases implemented.

Base automatically changed from try/partial-sync-no-monkey-patching to trunk December 1, 2023 02:56
@gziolo gziolo deleted the try/partial-sync-no-monkey-patching-inner-blocks branch July 31, 2024 05:14
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[Feature] Patterns A collection of blocks that can be synced (previously reusable blocks) or unsynced [Status] In Progress Tracking issues with work in progress [Type] Enhancement A suggestion for improvement.
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5 participants