Documentation: Document usage of core entities (getEntityRecords, etc)

[Novalis80]

I read the docs for "getEntityRecords" and i have no clue what that is nor what is available:

state: State tree
kind: Entity kind
name: Entity name
key: Record’s key 

So if anybody can shed some light on the issue i would be grateful.

My specific task is to get all posts of a certain category into a custom block. I guess this is the method that will get the job done?!

[designsimply]

I'm moving this out of [Type] Help Request and into [Type] Documentation.

@Novalis80 I found an article with several examples that use getEntityRecords and I don't see one that specifically mentions categories but does this comment asking about tags which might help:

https://riad.blog/2018/06/07/efficient-client-data-management-for-wordpress-plugins/#comment-1077

[buhlahkay]

Would love some more documentation on Entities in general.

[aduth]

My specific task is to get all posts of a certain category into a custom block. I guess this is the method that will get the job done?!

Responding to this specific request, you can achieve this by the following:

wp.data.select( 'core' ).getEntityRecords( 'postType', 'post', { categories: [ /* ... */ ] } )

...where the first two arguments correspond to retrieving entities of a particular post type (source) and the last is an object of query arguments to include in the request.

Note that the first time it is called, it may return an empty result, since it needs to fetch the data from the REST API. You can subscribe to changes in state by either using withSelect or subscribe.

I agree there should be better documentation here.

[aduth]

#15200 is a first pass here, which will include formatted documentation in the @wordpress/core-data README. This will simply be adapted directly from the JSDoc of the actions and selectors. As noted there, a next step will be to include useful @example tags.

[towfiqi]

@aduth This only works in the editor page. I am building a custom plugin with React that doesnt invlove gutenberg. I am trying to fetch latest posts , but in my Custom Plugin admin page, when I console log wp.data.select( 'core' ), I get undefined, which works fine in editor pages.

Is this restricted to only on editor pages? How do I use it for another custom page? Do I have to use the rest api?

[aduth]

@towfiqi If you rely on data from a particular module, you must ensure that your script defines that module as a dependency, using the $deps argument of wp_register_script or wp_enqueue_script.

In your case, core is the core-data module, so your enqueue should look similar to:

wp_enqueue_script( 'my-script', 'my-src.js', array( 'wp-core-data' ) );

All packages are registered in WordPress with the wp- prefix. Most other data stores just use the same name as their package. 'core' is the one exception here (as 'core-data').

[towfiqi]

I was trying array( 'wp-core' ) before. Now it works!! Thanks :)

[makkabi]

The documentation and event the source code says that getEntityRecords accepts four arguments, the first beeing a 'State Tree' object. But every example I see just uses three arguments, like this:
wp.data.select("core").getEntityRecords('postType', 'post', { per_page: -1 })
What am I missing? How can this even work, when the first argument is supposed to be an object?

[Lovor01]

The documentation and event the source code says that getEntityRecords accepts four arguments, the first beeing a 'State Tree' object. But every example I see just uses three arguments, like this:
wp.data.select("core").getEntityRecords('postType', 'post', { per_page: -1 })
What am I missing? How can this even work, when the first argument is supposed to be an object?

I am late for an answer, but as I understood from reading, useSelect or withSelect inject first argument, i.e. state

[skorasaurus]

For anyone else still trying to figure this out and what are some basic questions (what is an entity? what are entityrecords? ) #37615 answers some of these questions; Here is the The most recent published version .

[DaisyOlsen]

It looks like this documentation does exist