Provides a "block based" content management experience in Winter CMS
NOTE: This plugin is still in development and is likely to undergo changes. Do not use in production environments without using a version constraint in your composer.json file and carefully monitoring for breaking changes.
This plugin is available for installation via Composer.
composer require winter/wn-blocks-pluginAfter installing the plugin you will need to run the migrations and (if you are using a public folder) republish your public directory.
php artisan migrateNOTE: In order to have the
actionssupport function correctly, you need to load/plugins/winter/blocks/assets/dist/js/blocks.jsafter the Snowboard framework has been loaded.
This plugin manages the concept of "blocks" in Winter CMS. Blocks are self contained pieces of structured content that can be managed and rendered in a variety of ways.
Blocks can be provided by both plugins and themes and can be overridden by themes.
This plugin also introduces the concepts of "actions"; a way to define and execute client side actions that can be triggered by various events. Currently, actions are only defined in the $/winter/blocks/meta/actions.yaml file and must exist as a function on the window.actions object in the frontend keyed by the action's identifier that receives the data object as the first argument and (optionally) the event object that triggered the action as the second argument.
NOTE: This is very much a WIP API and is subject to change. Feedback very much welcome here for ideas around how to register, manage, extend, and provide actions to the frontend.
Blocks may have one or more tags, which is a way of defining and grouping blocks. For example, you may have a Gallery block which allows only "image" tagged blocks to be used, or a container block which allows all "content" tagged blocks but does not allow another "container" tagged block within.
Tags are defined in the blocks, and can be used to filter the available blocks in the Blocks form widget.
Themes can have their blocks automatically registered by placing .block files in the /blocks folder and subfolders.
Plugins can register blocks by providing a registerBlocks() method in their Plugin.php file. The method should return an array of block definitions in the following format:
public function registerBlocks(): array
{
return [
'example' => '$/myauthor/myplugin/blocks/example.block',
];
}Blocks are defined as .block files that consist of 2 to 3 parts:
- A YAML configuration section that defines the block's name, description, and other metadata as well as the block's properties and the form used to edit those properties.
- A PHP code section that allows for basic code to be executed when the block is rendered, similar to a partial.
- A Twig template section that defines the HTML markup template of the block.
When there are two parts, they are the Settings (YAML) & Markup (Twig) sections.
The following property values (name, description, etc) can be defined in the Settings (YAML) section of the .block files:
name: Example
description: Example Block Description
icon: icon-name
tags: [] # Defines the tags that this block is associated with
permissions: [] # List of permissions required to interact with the block
fields: # The form fields used to populate the block's content
config: # The block configuration optionsBlocks can use components in them, although they may face lifecycle limitations with complex AJAX handlers similar to component support in partials.
Blocks may define both fields as well as a config property in the Settings. Both of these parameters accept a form schema, but serve different purposes. In general, fields should contain the fields that actually fill in the content of the block, whereas the config should contain the fields that define the appearance or structure of the block itself. Fields are displayed within the block in the blocks form widget and configuration is displayed in an Inspector which can be shown by clicking on the "cogwheel" icon of a block in the blocks form widget.
For example, let's say you have a Title block which can display a heading tag in your content. You may optionally want to align it to left, center or right, and define which heading tag to use. The best practice would be to have a content field in the fields definition, because it's the actual content being displayed. The alignment and tag would become part of the config configuration.
Example:
name: Title
description: Adds a title
icon: icon-heading
tags: ["content"]
fields:
content:
label: false
span: full
type: text
config:
size:
label: Size
span: auto
type: dropdown
default: h2
options:
h1: H1
h2: H2
h3: H3
h4: H4
h5: H5
alignment_x:
label: Alignment
span: auto
type: dropdown
default: center
options:
left: Left
center: Centre
right: Right
==
{% if config.alignment_x == 'left' %}
{% set alignment = 'text-left' %}
{% elseif config.alignment_x == 'center' or not config.alignment_x %}
{% set alignment = 'text-center' %}
{% elseif config.alignment_x == 'right' %}
{% set alignment = 'text-right' %}
{% endif %}
<{{ config.size }} class="{{ alignment }}">
{{ content }}
</{{ config.size }}>
In order to provide an interface for managing block-based content, this plugin provides the blocks FormWidget. This widget can be used in the backend as a form field to manage blocks.
The blocks FormWidget supports the following additional properties:
allow: An array of block types that are allowed to be added to the widget. If specified, only those block types listed will be available to add to the current instance of the field. You can define either a straight array of individual blocks to allow, or define an object withtagsand/orblocksto allow whole tags or individual blocks.ignore: A list of block types that are not allowed to be added to the widget. If not specified, all block types will be available to add to the current instance of the field. You can define either a straight array of individual blocks to ignore, or define an object withtagsand/orblocksto ignore whole tags or individual blocks.tags: A list of block tags that are allowed to be added to the widget. If specified, only block types that have at least one of the listed tags will be available to add to the current instance of the field.
Those properties allow you to limit the block types that can be added to a specific instance of the widget, which can be very helpful when building "container" type blocks that need to avoid including themselves or only support a specific set of blocks as "children".
The button_group block type only allows a button block to be added to it:
buttons:
label: Buttons
span: full
type: blocks
allow:
- buttonThe container block type allows any block called title, or has a tag of content, to be added to it:
container:
label: Container
span: full
type: blocks
allow:
blocks:
- title
tags:
- contentThe columns_two block type allows every block except for itself to be added to it:
left:
label: Left Column
span: left
type: blocks
ignore:
- columns_two
right:
label: Right Column
span: right
type: blocks
ignore:
- columns_twoInclude the following line in your layout file to include the blocks FormWidget on a Winter.Pages page:
{variable type="blocks" name="blocks" tags="pages" tab="winter.pages::lang.editor.content"}{/variable}Twig functions are provided by this plugin for rendering blocks. You can then use the following Twig snippet to render the blocks data in your layout:
{{ renderBlocks(blocks) }}You can use it anywhere an expression is accepted:
{{ ('<p>Some text</p>' ~ renderBlocks(blocks) ~ '<p>Some more text<p/>') | raw }}
{% set myContent = renderBlocks(blocks) %}If you need to render a single block, you can use the renderBlock function:
{{ renderBlock({
'_group':'title',
'content':'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.',
'alignment_x':'left',
'size':'h1',
}) }}
{{ renderBlock('title', {
'content':'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.',
'alignment_x':'left',
'size':'h1',
}) }}If you need to customize the rendering of blocks according to their group, you can use a special blocks.htm partial in your theme:
{% for blockIndex, block in blocks %}
{# Adding blocks to the following array allows them to implement their own containers #}
{% if block._group in ["hero", "section"] %}
{{ renderBlock(block) }}
{% else %}
<section class="flex flex-wrap items-center mx-auto max-w-screen-xl">
<div class="w-full p-4">
{{ renderBlock(block) }}
</div>
</section>
{% endif %}
{% endfor %}You can then use the following Twig snippet to render the block data in your layout:
{% partial 'blocks' blocks=blocks %}use Winter\Blocks\Classes\Block;
// Render a single block from stored data
Block::render($model->blocks[0]);
// Render an array of blocks from stored data
Block::renderAll($model->blocks);
// Render a single block manually
Block::render('title', [
'content' => 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.',
'alignment_x' => 'left',
'size' => 'h1',
]);
// Render a single block manually using only array data
Block::render([
'_group' => 'title',
'content' => 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.',
'alignment_x' => 'left',
'size' => 'h1',
]);If your theme uses CSS class purging (i.e. Tailwind), it can be useful to add the following paths to your build configuration to include the styles for any blocks defined by the theme or plugins.
// tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
content: [
// Winter.Pages static page content
'./content/**/*.htm',
'./layouts/**/*.htm',
'./pages/**/*.htm',
'./partials/**/*.htm',
'./blocks/**/*.block',
// Blocks provided by plugins
'../../plugins/*/*/blocks/*.block',
],
};The Winter.Blocks is perfect for my block-based themes. I've been looking for something like this for a long time
