Deactivate matrix blocks per site

[mihob]

We have a multilingual site and use a matrix field to build the content of each page with blocks. The blocks are stored in each language.

From time to time, however, it would be desirable to disable blocks in individual languages. But this seems not to be possible, blocks are then always deactivated for all languages.

Can this be done somehow? Or is it basically not possible?

[brandonkelly]

That’s currently not possible, however you could pull it off by adding a custom “Enabled for site” Lightswitch field to each block type (defaults to enabled), and set it to be translatable for each site.

Then when querying Matrix blocks, only fetch the ones where that field is enabled:

{% set blocks = entry.myMatrixField
  .myEnabledForSiteHandle(true)
  .all() %}

[mihob]

Thanks!

[mihob]

@brandonkelly Sorry for my late reply, but I'm a little lost here right now.

We get our content via GraphQL and it doesn't seem possible to filter the MatrixBlocks accordingly.

Our query looks something like this:

query Page ($siteId: [QueryArgument]!, $uri: [String]!){
  entry(siteId: $siteId , uri: $uri){
    title
    ... on pages_contentpage_Entry{
      elements(enabledForSite: true) {
        title
      }      
    }
  }
}

which results in the following error:

{
  "errors": [
    {
      "message": "Unknown argument \"enabledForSite\" on field \"elements\" of type \"pages_contentpage_Entry\".",
      "extensions": {
        "category": "graphql"
      },
      "locations": [
        {
          "line": 5,
          "column": 16
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

It works without the inline fragment ... on pages_contentpage_Entry, but i dont really know why it causes an error.

[mihob]

Well, there are about 20 different block types for the matrix field. So the resulting query would be huge.

Ist there really no simple way to filter matrix field blocks in GraphQl by their field values? Or do i get the field naming wrong?
Maybe Another example helps, some of my block types have a field with the handle layout. Now i want to find all blocks where layout has the value "1":

{
    entries(section: "pages", type: "contentpage" ) {
      sectionHandle
      typeHandle
      elements(layout: "1"){
        typeHandle
      	layout
      }
  }
}

The query would not find any blocks even if there were some with a layout value of "1"

And i still don't understand, why using an inline fragment in that context causes an error.

[brandonkelly]

Ist there really no simple way to filter matrix field blocks in GraphQl by their field values?

To be clear, yes, in general it is possible, but there are limitations. It doesn’t work reliably when two or more sub-fields have the same field handle. And in general you can’t filter by fields across multiple block types simultaneously, because or conditions aren’t possible over GraphQL.

The only exception to that is Lightswitch fields. If you have, say, two block types, each with a nested Lightswitch field (with unique handles), and their default values are both set to enabled, then you could do:

myMatrixFieldHandle(lightswitchFieldA: true, lightswitchFieldB: true)

That’s only possible for Lightswitch fields because they will treat all null field values as whatever their default value is set to. So for example, blocks of type A won’t be excluded even though they don’t have lightswitchFieldB assigned to them, so long as the field’s default value is enabled. And blocks of type B won’t be excluded even though they don’t have lightswitchFieldA assigned to them.

[brandonkelly]

Well, there are about 20 different block types for the matrix field. So the resulting query would be huge.

Yes, it will be an ugly query. I didn’t realize you had 20 block types when I made the initial suggestion.

Maybe a better way to go would be to just include these availabelForLanguage fields in the output, and do the filtering from JavaScript instead.

[mihob]

All right, many thanks for your help!

We are now filtering the blocks in the frontend as you suggested.

Out of curiosity, do you plan to eventually make matrix blocks deactivatable by language/site, analog to entries?

[brandonkelly]

We probably will at some point, but no specific plan of attack yet.