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Including Frontend JavaScript with a Block

Sometimes we need to include frontend JavaScript with a block. If it's only a small bit of CSS it's not a big issue to load that script on every page with the main frontend JavaScript bundle of the site.

However, as soon as you start to load larger libraries or a lot of custom JavaScript that is only needed whenever a specific block is present on the page it is bad for performance to always load that entire JS on every single page.

There are two ways we can solve this:

  1. Use dynamic imports (Webpack code splitting)
  2. Only enqueue block specific JS when the block is present on the page

In this guide, we are taking a look at the second option as it often is the easier and more robust one of the two.

Only enqueueing block specific JS when the block is present on the page​

To have a JavaScript file that only gets enqueued on the page if the block is present, we can define a viewScript in the block.json file. This viewScript can either be a relative file path to the JS file or a script handle that should get enqueued.

block.json
{
    "apiVersion": 2,
    "name": "namespace/example",
    "title": "Example Block",
    "editorScript": "file:../../../dist/js/blocks/example/editor.js",
    "viewScript": "file:../../../dist/js/blocks/example/view.js"
}

This automatically takes the JS file that is located at the relative file path and registers it using the wp_register_script function. The script gets the handle namespace-example-view-script. The handle is generated using the block namespace, followed by the block name, with the suffix -view-script added at the end.

note

WordPress expects a file that is provided via a relative file path to also have a .asset.php file next to it with the script dependencies and generated version number. Both @wordpress/scripts and 10up-toolkit do this automatically for you using the @wordpress/dependency-extraction-webpack-plugin.

If your script relies on additional non-WordPress dependencies like a 3rd party library that cannot be installed via NPM you can also handle the registration of the view script manually and only provide the script handle you registered to the viewScript in the block.json file.

$asset_file_name    = 'view-script';
$asset_dependencies = ( include NAMESPACE_PATH . "dist/$asset_file_name.asset.php" );
wp_register_script(
    'my-custom-view-script-handle',
    THEME_URL . "dist/$asset_file_name.js",
    array_merge( $asset_dependencies['dependencies'], [ 'custom-dependency' ] ),
    $asset_dependencies['version'],
    true
);
block.json
{
    "apiVersion": 2,
    "name": "namespace/example",
    "title": "Example Block",
    "editorScript": "file:../../../dist/js/blocks/example/editor.js",
    "viewScript": "my-custom-view-script-handle"
}

Working with dynamic blocks​

Out of the box, this mechanism works great for static blocks that store their markup in the Database. However, most of the blocks we are building at 10up get built as dynamic blocks, using the PHP render_callback to create the markup on the server.

In these instances, WordPress will not automatically enqueue the script for us. So we manually need to add the wp_enqueue_script function to our render_callback. In the 10up theme scaffold this has been abstracted away into the markup.php file located in the blocks folder.

blocks.php
<?php
/**
 * Example Block Markup
 * @package tenup/theme
 */

wp_enqueue_script('namespace-example-view-script');
?>

<section <?php echo get_block_wrapper_attributes(); ?>>
    <h2>Hello World!</h2>
</section>