I attended 2 workshops this year at WCEU23 in Athens, both were about blocks. At Plank, we create custom WordPress themes for clients that almost always involve custom blocks. It's a subject that's been unavoidable since the introduction of them in WordPress 5.0 - and we like them. It allows us to create modular designs that give our clients the power to layout their content that stays consistent with their branding without constantly involving developers after the site launch. So naturally I was interested in seeing what the rest of the WordPress community was up to when it came to the subject of blocks.
The first workshop I attended was by Luis Herranz ( @luisherranz ), "Building interactive blocks: a step-by-step workshop". According to Luis, the interactive API will hopefully be making its debut in WordPress 6.4 🤞. The goal of the Interactive API is to facilitate implementing interactive features into blocks natively, such as “heart this post” or “add to cart” without page reload. You can read his proposal for the interactive API here. You can download the repo from the workshop here and jump through the steps of his example here. Personally, I can't wait to see this feature in core.
The second workshop I attended was by Robert Richardson, "Code techniques for handling dynamic data in the new(ish) world of blocks". What was interesting about this workshop, for me, wasn't really anything new; but it was really assuring to me that Plank's on the right track concerning the development of blocks. When he asked the room of about 50-60 attendees "who was using custom REST API endpoints to pass data to their blocks", I was the only one who raised their hand! I was honestly shocked that no one else seemed to take this approach to handling data. I recommend leveraging the REST API capabilities of WordPress for use in your blocks. It's very easy to set up, and very powerful. React developers will have a field day.
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