Allow nesting widgets

[Piotrek Koszuliński]

Currently it's impossible to insert widget into another widget's nested editable.

Sub tickets:

• #11983 - click to select does not work
• #12000 - nested widgets are not initialized after loading data
• #12006 - drag and drop of block widgets
• #12072 - drag and drop of inline widgets
• #12007 - integration with Elementspath plugin
• #12008 - pasting image2 into simplebox causes an error
• #12009 - integration with Magicline plugin
• #12018 - widgets garbage collecting and destroying patterns
• #12019 - format dropdown displays wrong value when nested block widget is focused
• #12020 - incorrect behaviour when pasting simple box into another simple box's editable (it was invalid but I left it if anyone will be confused similarly to me)
• #12022 - main widget does not have drag handler
• #12024 - [FF] outline is extended to the left because of unpositioned drag handlers of nested widgets
• #12054 - [IE10] regression in tests.

[Piotrek Koszuliński]

Duplicate closed #11246.

[Matti Järvinen]

Since widget feature is very new, I don't know where in the code limitation exists and if it's possible to pass widget definitions to widgets' nested editable in recursive manner.

I believe describing current design limitations and ideas about how to accomplish this would be very beneficial for the thought process.

On adjoining note first thing that comes into mind that it should be possible to use ACF to limit certain widgets? And if that is the case should ACF widget rules use widget names or just elements within widgets. Using widget names would make it possible to add css rows & columns of sorts as widgets while limiting the possibility to nest them if needed (possibly div-tag based).

[Mik]

Good to know that it is not working. Because I was trying to do this. For info - I was able to put one widget inside another. But got error when converting to source.

[Piotrek Koszuliński]

The limitations are in many places. Part of them are related to CKEditor itself. For example:

• the data processing, which as @mik mentioned, will throw error,
• handling mouse events, because there's a lot of custom code which prevents browsers from failing; having nested widgets will complicate this code,
• hm... definitely more, but I haven't tested it yet.

And significant part is related to unpredictable browsers:

• focus handling which is... just random,
• other bugs related to selection, keystrokes, mouse, etc. which more complicated case will uncover.

As you can see - first we need to learn what has to be done, but the known obstacles requires some effort too. That's why we didn't include this in 4.3.

Regarding ACF - there's a separate ticket: #11115.

[Chad Engler]

This is a highly desirable feature for us, and I managed to have a semi-working solution by making my downcasts really smart about dealing with content that is also a widget (of the same plugin). Unfortunately this doesn't help for widgets of different types, and there are obviously tons of bugs with focus and therefore copy/pasting as well.

Is there anyway we can get this on the 4.4 milestone? This and blacklisting (#10276) would really clear up a lot of cruft for me.

[Piotrek Koszuliński]

Unfortunately we won't be able to implement this in 4.4. We know that it is a serious limitation, but the task is really serious too. We made a conscious decision to postpone this part of widgets system, because we anticipated a lot of problems (especially with focus). Moreover, other tasks related to widgets like styling, enhancements for image2, better integration with ACF are important too, so they made to 4.4. Nesting widgets... maybe 4.5, but we cannot promise anything.