Interactivity API Demo - WP Movies

What is this?

This is a demo plugin which shows the features of the Interactivity API for WordPress (TODO: link to the blog post in Make Core).

It can be installed as a WordPress plugin that creates a site similar to (TODO: insert URL when have a production site)

The plugin is split into:

• /src/blocks - Start here to understand how to build interactive blocks with the Interactivity API. The folder contains all the custom blocks used in the demo. The interactive blocks that use the Interactivity API are:

  • /src/blocks/favorites-number - Displays the number of movies liked.
  • /src/blocks/movie-search - An interactive movie search block.
  • /src/blocks/post-favorite - A block that allows the users to like a movie.
  • /src/blocks/video-player - A video player block that plays the movie trailers using Picture-in-Picture (PiP).
  • /src/blocks/movie-tabs - A "tabs" block which allows the user to switch between different kinds of info about the movie.

• /lib - The code that contains the runtime and internals of the Interactivity API and the configuration needed to run the demo.

• /wp-movies-theme - The custom theme used in the demo. Contains some custom styling and the templates for the header & footer as well as the movie & actors pages.

When will I be able to use this?

The Interactivity API is an experimental feature and not ready for adoption yet. It is under active development and its final public API is very likely going to change before an official release. For now, it's recommended to experiment with the Interactivity API via this demo. Use this in your projects at your own risk.

Setup

In order to be able to test this demo, you just need to:

1. Install the required plugins

   • Gutenberg

   • Block Interactivity Experiments. This one requires Gutenberg to work.

   • Movies Demo Plugin. This one requires the Block Interactivity Experiments to work.

   Note that, if you are using wp-env to run your site locally, these plugins will be installed by default after running wp-env start. Before that, don't forget to:

   • Install the dependencies:

   npm install && composer install

   • Build the plugin:

   npm run build
   
   # If you plan on tinkering with the frontend code you start the webpack
   # server which automatically rebuild the files when you make any changes.
   npm start

2. Install the theme

   You need to install and activate the Movies Demo Theme. Again, if you are using wp-env, it is already installed by default and you just have to activate it. You can run:

     npx wp-env run cli "wp theme activate wp-movies-theme"

3. Add the movie and actor data to the WordPress database

   You can import the data manually:

   1. Go to Tools > Import > WordPress and click on Run Importer.
   2. Select the wp_sampledata_movies.xml file.
   3. Select the Download and import file attachments and click on the Upload file and import.
   4. Repeat the process for the wp_sampledata_actors.xml file.
   5. Repeat the process for the wp_sampledata_media.xml file. This one can take up to five minutes.

   If you are using wp-env, you can run the following commands:

     npx wp-env run cli "import wp-content/plugins/wp-movies-demo/wp_sampledata_movies.xml --authors=create"
     npx wp-env run cli "import wp-content/plugins/wp-movies-demo/wp_sampledata_media.xml  --authors=create"
     npx wp-env run cli "import wp-content/plugins/wp-movies-demo/wp_sampledata_actors.xml --authors=create"

   If you run into any problems you can run npx wp-env clean all and start this step over again.

4. Set the permalinks to use the Post name in Settings > Permalinks.

   If you are using wp-env you can just run this command:

   npx wp-env run cli "wp rewrite structure '/%postname%/'"

5. Change settings to show 8 posts and RSS items per page in Settings > Reading

6. Enable the Client Side Navigations in the Settings > WP Directives.

Things to try

Client-side Navigations and pagination

When enabled, the lists of movies and actors will paginate without doing a full page refresh. You can enable this behavior in your WordPress admin page in Settings > WP Directives. Click around to the next/previous page of the movies or actors. You the list is loaded without a delay. This is because the HTML for that page is prefetched ahead of time, and only the nodes that are different between the current page and the next page are updated.

Add to favourites

When you add a movie to favourites notice how the number of movie likes is preserved when navigating to another page. In addition to client-side navigations, the Interactivity API uses a smart DOM diffing algorithm. This allows the interactive state of blocks on the current page to be preserved!

Instant search

Try searching for movies or actors. The search results are rendered dynamically on the server!

Remove the Search template

Try opening the site editor and removing the "Search" template. You'll notice that the Search experience keeps working but that now the Search results look different. That's because in the absence of the Search template, the Archive template is being used. The Interactivity API is designed to work with the server-rendered markup and Full-site editing.

Play the movie trailers

When you navigate to the page for a movie, you can play its trailer. If you have the client-side navigations enabled, you'll notice that the trailer will keep playing as you keep navigating around the site!

Credits

Powered by WordPress and TMDb.