Post meta blocks inside sentence

[iamtakashi]

It'd be great if we could display post meta blocks (e.g. post date, post categories, etc.) in a sentence

There are tons of different variations, but I'm sure you get the idea :)

Related: #24953

[carlomanf]

#21932 might be related

[mtias]

I think a fine line to thread here is not creating a pseudo-templating language by using fragments of dynamic data and user editable text around it. The degree of customization you might want to do is quite infinite. It'd make sense to offer more tailored blocks for some common elements — for example Byline as a separate block from Author and Category. Byline could have a few options, but it should still be making default decisions. A custom block could be provided for more novel displays. cc @mcsf for thoughts

[mcsf]

not creating a pseudo-templating language by using fragments of dynamic data

Agreed, this is something to avoid.

It's already confusing enough that @wordpress/date has to map PHP's DateTime format to moment.js, and that (for now) JS has no robust enough time format that we can use, and that JS doesn't implement the well established strftime format (that even PHP does). In short, talking consistently across environments is difficult enough without introducing DSLs.

Byline could have a few options, but it should still be making default decisions.

Yeah, I think this is the way to go. In short, a Byline block providing a few choices, e.g.

• Posted by author on date
• Posted in category by author

Beyond these fixed options, I don't object a priori to people experimenting with an advanced control to override Byline's string, but it would need to solve a lot of upfront challenges (safe interpolation, simple implementation, and support for i18n). That last one, solving i18n, is really the hardest part. I really don't want to see __( 'Posted' ) + sprintf( __(' by %' ), author ) + sprintf( __( 'on %' ), date ). 😅

[mtias]

Makes me think if — for now — we should proxy date generation to the server through a lean API endpoint.

[mcsf]

Makes me think if — for now — we should proxy date generation to the server through a lean API endpoint.

I wondered similarly, but we already use wp.date.format in a bunch of places successfully, even if it's strange that we have to map between formats, so I don't know how much value that endpoint would provide.

[mtias]

We might be able to remove some code and dependencies.