introducing-attributes-and-editable-fields.md

Introducing Attributes and Editable Fields

The example blocks so far are still not very interesting because they lack options to customize the appearance of the message. In this section, we will implement a RichText field allowing the user to specify their own message. Before doing so, it's important to understand how the state of a block (its "attributes") is maintained and changed over time.

Attributes

Until now, the edit and save functions have returned a simple representation of a paragraph element. We also learned how these functions are responsible for describing the structure of the block's appearance. If the user changes a block, this structure may need to change. To achieve this, the state of a block is maintained throughout the editing session as a plain JavaScript object, and when an update occurs, the edit function is invoked again. Put another way: the output of a block is a function of its attributes.

One challenge of maintaining the representation of a block as a JavaScript object is that we must be able to extract this object again from the saved content of a post. This is achieved with the block type's attributes property:

	attributes: {
		content: {
			type: 'string',
			source: 'html',
			selector: 'p',
		},
	},

When registering a new block type, the attributes property describes the shape of the attributes object you'd like to receive in the edit and save functions. Each value is a source function to find the desired value from the markup of the block.

In the code snippet above, when loading the editor, the content value will be extracted from the HTML of the paragraph element in the saved post's markup.

Components and the RichText Component

Earlier examples used the createElement function to create DOM nodes, but it's also possible to encapsulate this behavior into "components". This abstraction helps you share common behaviors and hide complexity in self-contained units.

There are a number of components available to use in implementing your blocks. You can see one such component in the code below: the RichText component is part of the wp-block-editor package.

The RichText component can be considered as a super-powered textarea element, enabling rich content editing including bold, italics, hyperlinks, etc.

To use the RichText component, and using ES5 code, remember to add wp-block-editor to the dependency array of registered script handles when calling wp_register_script.

// automatically load dependencies and version
$asset_file = include( plugin_dir_path( __FILE__ ) . 'build/index.asset.php');

wp_register_script(
	'gutenberg-examples-03-esnext',
	plugins_url( 'build/index.js', __FILE__ ),
	$asset_file['dependencies'],
	$asset_file['version']
);

Do not forget to also update the editor_script handle in register_block_type to gutenberg-examples-03-esnext.

Implementing this behavior as a component enables you as the block implementer to be much more granular about editable fields. Your block may not need RichText at all, or it may need many independent RichText elements, each operating on a subset of the overall block state.

Because RichText allows for nested nodes, you'll most often use it in conjunction with the html attribute source when extracting the value from saved content. You'll also use RichText.Content in the save function to output RichText values.

Here is the complete block definition for Example 03.

{% codetabs %} {% JSX %}

import { registerBlockType } from '@wordpress/blocks';
import { useBlockProps, RichText } from '@wordpress/block-editor';

registerBlockType( 'gutenberg-examples/example-03-editable-esnext', {
	apiVersion: 3,
	title: 'Example: Editable (esnext)',
	icon: 'universal-access-alt',
	category: 'design',
	attributes: {
		content: {
			type: 'string',
			source: 'html',
			selector: 'p',
		},
	},
	example: {
		attributes: {
			content: 'Hello World',
		},
	},
	edit: ( props ) => {
		const {
			attributes: { content },
			setAttributes,
			className,
		} = props;
		const blockProps = useBlockProps();
		const onChangeContent = ( newContent ) => {
			setAttributes( { content: newContent } );
		};
		return (
			<RichText
				{ ...blockProps }
				tagName="p"
				onChange={ onChangeContent }
				value={ content }
			/>
		);
	},
	save: ( props ) => {
		const blockProps = useBlockProps.save();
		return (
			<RichText.Content
				{ ...blockProps }
				tagName="p"
				value={ props.attributes.content }
			/>
		);
	},
} );

{% Plain %}

( function ( blocks, blockEditor, element ) {
	var el = element.createElement;
	var RichText = blockEditor.RichText;
	var useBlockProps = blockEditor.useBlockProps;

	blocks.registerBlockType( 'gutenberg-examples/example-03-editable', {
		apiVersion: 3,
		title: 'Example: Editable',
		icon: 'universal-access-alt',
		category: 'design',

		attributes: {
			content: {
				type: 'string',
				source: 'html',
				selector: 'p',
			},
		},
		example: {
			attributes: {
				content: 'Hello World',
			},
		},
		edit: function ( props ) {
			var blockProps = useBlockProps();
			var content = props.attributes.content;
			function onChangeContent( newContent ) {
				props.setAttributes( { content: newContent } );
			}

			return el(
				RichText,
				Object.assign( blockProps, {
					tagName: 'p',
					onChange: onChangeContent,
					value: content,
				} )
			);
		},

		save: function ( props ) {
			var blockProps = useBlockProps.save();
			return el(
				RichText.Content,
				Object.assign( blockProps, {
					tagName: 'p',
					value: props.attributes.content,
				} )
			);
		},
	} );
} )( window.wp.blocks, window.wp.blockEditor, window.wp.element );

{% end %}