Experience Level: Intermediate to Advanced JavaScript
In this post – published July 26, 2018 and part of a two-part series – Hardeep Asrani outlines a comprehensive guide for converting meta boxes, shortcodes, TinyMCE buttons, and other editor features in plugins to leverage block editor APIs.
Article
Topics:
- Identifying elements to convert, such as meta boxes, shortcodes, TinyMCE buttons, or other legacy editing features
- How to adapt a plugin to work with the block editor
- Setting up a block editor development environment
- Approaches for adapting plugins to work with the Block API
- Enqueuing scripts and importing dependencies
- Defining block attributes and configuring the editing interface
- Intro to the Sidebar API (covered in detail in part II)
- Extending block inspector, working with block controls and toolbar
Takeaways:
It’s worth noting that this post is merely part I of a two-part series published by this author. The second part is just as in-depth as the first and will probably be shared as its own post later.
This tutorial is particularly useful it directly addresses a problem plaguing many plugin developers, even following the WordPress 5.0 release – how to go about updating your plugin features. Hardeep does an excellent job illustrating how to solve many old problems in a new, accepted way, without focusing too heavily on shiny things.
This tutorial series is primarily useful in that provides excellently-documented code examples with very plausible real-world use cases, something every tutorial should aspire to.