[Alternate] Podcast Episode block: post-bound (single source of truth) by robertbpugh · Pull Request #48546 · Automattic/jetpack

robertbpugh · 2026-05-05T23:06:18Z

Draft alternate to #48375. The block does the same job, but episode title, author, and date come from the post instead of from block attributes. Walkthrough is in p1778019506270959-slack-podcast-tools, where Tony also raised a third option: a post-level setting (like Jetpack's paid-content gate) that manages podcast metadata at the post level rather than on the block.

Why

Tony's branch stores title, summary, description, author, imageId, imageUrl, and publishDate on the block. Every podcast post already has those fields (post_title, post author, post date). When an author edits one copy and forgets the other, Reader, RSS, the player, and the post page can show different versions of the same episode.

Substack avoids this by treating the post as the episode: the post title is the episode title, and the show notes go in the post body.

Cover art is the exception, since reusing the featured image renders the same picture twice on a post page (theme banner plus player square). This branch keeps coverArt as a block attribute and falls back to the show-level cover from Settings → Writing → Podcasting when nothing is set, matching how Apple Podcasts and Spotify resolve cover art.

What changes

block.json: drops title, summary, description, author, imageId, imageUrl, publishDate, guid. Adds coverArt ({ id, url }) and usesContext: [ "postId", "postType", "queryId" ]. Audio metadata, episode metadata, and Podcasting 2.0 fields are unchanged.
edit.js: reads post title, author, and date via useEntityProp with block context, following core's post-title and post-author-name blocks. Cover art picker falls back to window.jetpackPodcastEpisodeData.showCoverUrl for editor preview parity. Sidebar collapses to Episode / Audio / Podcasting 2.0.
podcast-episode.php: render callback uses get_the_title(), get_the_author_meta(), get_the_date(), get_permalink(). Cover art falls through episode → podcasting_image option → none. Show notes come from post content, so the callback no longer touches post_excerpt. enqueue_block_editor_assets exposes the show-level URL via wp_add_inline_script.

Comparison

	#48375	This branch
Title	Block attribute	Post title
Cover art	Block attribute	Block attribute, falls back to show cover
Summary	Block attribute	Post content (show notes)
Author	Block attribute	Post author
Date	Block attribute	Post date
GUID	Block attribute	Post permalink (RSS layer derives)
Sidebar panels	Episode details, Cover art, Podcasting 2.0	Episode, Audio, Podcasting 2.0
Works in Query Loop / site editor	No	Yes (block context)
Block outside a post	Renders with stored attributes	Inert with placeholder

Test plan

Install Jetpack Beta on a test site and switch to this branch.
Create a podcast post, insert the block, confirm the sidebar shows Episode, Audio, and Podcasting 2.0 panels only. No Title, Summary, Author, Publish Date, or GUID fields.
Type a post title and watch the player card update without saving.
With no episode cover art set, confirm the player falls back to the show cover from Settings → Writing → Podcasting.
Set an episode cover, confirm it overrides the show cover. Click "Use show cover art" to clear, confirm the show cover returns.
Add show notes in the post body, confirm they render below the player on the published page and not on the card.
Publish, fetch the category feed, verify <enclosure>, itunes: tags, and Podcasting 2.0 elements land in RSS.
Drop the block into a Query Loop on a podcast archive template, confirm each post renders its own title and cover.
Drop the block into a Site Editor sidebar template area outside a post, confirm the placeholder fires instead of crashing.

cc @arcangelini, treat this as input to the design conversation. Fold whichever pieces work into your branch, or keep the full model if post-bound is the long-term direction.

…string literals

…cover/excerpt) Alternate model that drops the duplicating attributes (title, summary, description, author, imageId, imageUrl, publishDate) and reads them from the surrounding post instead. - block.json: remove title/summary/description/author/imageId/imageUrl/ publishDate attributes. Block keeps only audio + episode + Podcasting 2.0 metadata. - edit.js: useSelect from core/editor reads post title, excerpt, featured image, author. Sidebar collapses to three panels (Episode, Audio, Podcasting 2.0). Placeholder when block lives outside a post/page. - podcast-episode.php: render_callback uses get_the_title(), get_the_excerpt(), get_the_post_thumbnail_url(), get_the_author(), get_the_date(). Guarded by is_singular() so the block stays inert in sidebars and template parts. - save.js: drop title fallback in the noscript link. Why: previously the block stored its own copy of the post title, featured image, and excerpt. Authors edit the post, the block goes stale; or they edit the block, the post stays out of date. RSS, Reader, the block, and the post page can each show different copy of the same episode. Substack and every episode-centric platform avoids this by treating the post as the episode. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 <noreply@anthropic.com>

…estore poster size - Read post title/excerpt/featured image/author/date via useEntityProp with usesContext: ['postId', 'postType', 'queryId']. Same pattern as core's post-title/post-excerpt/post-featured-image blocks. Block now works inside Query Loops and site-editor singular templates, not just the post editor. - Replace local formatSeconds() with convertSecondsToTimeCode from extensions/shared/components/media-player-control/utils. - Render publish date in editor preview to match the frontend. - Use medium_large (768px) for the poster image instead of large (1024px); the cover renders at 256-512px CSS. - Hoist person-row inline style to a module const. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 <noreply@anthropic.com>

github-actions · 2026-05-05T23:07:04Z

Are you an Automattician? Please test your changes on all WordPress.com environments to help mitigate accidental explosions.

To test on WoA, go to the Plugins menu on a WoA dev site. Click on the "Upload" button and follow the upgrade flow to be able to upload, install, and activate the Jetpack Beta plugin. Once the plugin is active, go to Jetpack > Jetpack Beta, select your plugin (Jetpack), and enable the add/podcast-episode-block-postbound branch.
To test on Simple, run the following command on your sandbox:

bin/jetpack-downloader test jetpack add/podcast-episode-block-postbound

Interested in more tips and information?

In your local development environment, use the jetpack rsync command to sync your changes to a WoA dev blog.
Read more about our development workflow here: PCYsg-eg0-p2
Figure out when your changes will be shipped to customers here: PCYsg-eg5-p2

github-actions · 2026-05-05T23:07:21Z

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jp-launch-control · 2026-05-05T23:15:34Z

Code Coverage Summary

Coverage changed in 1 file.

File	Coverage	Δ%	Δ Uncovered
projects/plugins/jetpack/extensions/shared/components/media-player-control/utils.js	0/28 (0.00%)	0.00%	26 💔

6 files are newly checked for coverage. Only the first 5 are listed here.

File	Coverage
projects/plugins/jetpack/extensions/blocks/podcast-episode/edit.js	0/76 (0.00%) 💔
projects/plugins/jetpack/extensions/blocks/podcast-episode/editor.js	0/1 (0.00%) 💔
projects/plugins/jetpack/extensions/blocks/podcast-episode/save.js	0/5 (0.00%) 💔
projects/plugins/jetpack/extensions/blocks/podcast-episode/podcast-episode.php	84/196 (42.86%) ❤️‍🩹
projects/plugins/jetpack/extensions/blocks/podcast-episode/icons/index.js	0/0 (—%) 🤷

Full summary · PHP report · JS report

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…ten i18n + a11y - render_block() now accepts \WP_Block and resolves the backing post from block context, falling back to the global loop. Drops the is_singular() guard so the block works inside Query Loops and feeds, and switches all template tags to post-aware variants (get_the_title($post), etc.) so the rendered episode matches the loop item, not whatever the global page query points at. - utils.js (extensions/shared/components/media-player-control): wrap the mejs.Utils helpers in arrow functions so the lookup happens at call time. Reading them at module-evaluation time would throw ReferenceError if the importing block evaluates before mediaelement loads on the page. - Editor: switch concatenated Season/Episode strings to sprintf( __( 'Season %d' ) ) so locales that reorder noun/number can translate cleanly. Drop `alt={ postTitle }` on the cover-art preview (the title is rendered immediately after as h3), use BaseControl .VisualLabel for the People section so the label does not point at a non-existent input id, gate the placeholder on both postId AND postType, and drop the redundant useBlockProps className argument. - Cover-art alt also dropped on the frontend for the same a11y reason. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Cover art now falls back show -> episode override (Apple/Spotify hierarchy). Featured image is no longer reused, so themes don't render the same image twice. Show notes hint replaces the excerpt summary on the player card so authors write notes once, in post content. GUID UI dropped - RSS layer derives it from the permalink.

Copilot

Pull request overview

This PR introduces an alternate implementation of the Jetpack Podcast Episode block that treats the post as the single source of truth for episode title/author/date, while keeping per-episode cover art as a block attribute with a show-level fallback.

Changes:

Adds a new jetpack/podcast-episode block with a post-bound data model (usesContext) and a streamlined inspector (Episode / Audio / Podcasting 2.0).
Implements server-side rendering that pulls title/author/date from the resolved post context and applies a cover art fallback chain (episode override → show setting).
Reworks the shared media timecode helpers to defer mejs lookup until call time.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 12 out of 12 changed files in this pull request and generated 7 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
projects/plugins/jetpack/extensions/shared/components/media-player-control/utils.js	Changes timecode helpers to look up `mejs.Utils` at call time instead of import time.
projects/plugins/jetpack/extensions/index.json	Registers the `podcast-episode` extension.
projects/plugins/jetpack/extensions/blocks/podcast-episode/style.scss	Adds shared editor/front-end styling for the episode card layout.
projects/plugins/jetpack/extensions/blocks/podcast-episode/save.js	Adds a direct-link fallback saved markup for non-frontend contexts (feeds/email/exports).
projects/plugins/jetpack/extensions/blocks/podcast-episode/podcast-episode.php	Registers and renders the block; injects editor data for show cover fallback.
projects/plugins/jetpack/extensions/blocks/podcast-episode/icons/microphone.js	Adds the block icon SVG.
projects/plugins/jetpack/extensions/blocks/podcast-episode/icons/index.js	Exports the icon(s).
projects/plugins/jetpack/extensions/blocks/podcast-episode/editor.scss	Adds editor-only styles for controls (people editor, cover picker, hint text).
projects/plugins/jetpack/extensions/blocks/podcast-episode/editor.js	Registers the block from metadata and wires edit/save.
projects/plugins/jetpack/extensions/blocks/podcast-episode/edit.js	Implements the editor UI, media selection, and post-bound display fields.
projects/plugins/jetpack/extensions/blocks/podcast-episode/block.json	Defines the block metadata/attributes, including `coverArt` and `usesContext`.
projects/plugins/jetpack/changelog/add-podcast-episode-block	Adds a changelog entry for the new block.

- Prettier: collapse multi-line help, VisualLabel children, ternary args. - i18n: move translator comments inside sprintf so the rule reads them. - i18n: split __() ternary so the extractor sees literal msgids. - PHPCS: pass JSON encoding flags to wp_json_encode. - Phan: cast post_author to int for get_the_author_meta.

Co-authored-by: Copilot Autofix powered by AI <175728472+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>

robertbpugh · 2026-05-06T14:30:18Z

@copilot apply changes based on the comments in this thread

…18n, PHPUnit tests Agent-Logs-Url: https://github.com/Automattic/jetpack/sessions/fb9995d0-fe14-48cb-9045-c12c05d7b263 Co-authored-by: robertbpugh <52668747+robertbpugh@users.noreply.github.com>

Copilot · 2026-05-06T14:37:10Z

@copilot apply changes based on the comments in this thread

Applied all unresolved review changes in commit 246b6cf:

coverArt array guard (podcast-episode.php:130): Added isset( $attributes['coverArt'] ) && is_array( $attributes['coverArt'] ) before accessing ['url'], preventing PHP warnings/errors when the attribute is a string or missing.
TRANSCRIPT_TYPE_OPTIONS localization (edit.js:39-43): Wrapped all four format labels with __( ..., 'jetpack' ) so they are translatable.
PHPUnit tests (Podcast_Episode_Block_Test.php): Added 7 tests covering non-frontend $content passthrough, empty/invalid mediaUrl early returns, missing post context, episode cover art taking precedence over show cover, show-level cover fallback when no episode art is set, and graceful handling of a malformed (string) coverArt attribute.

get_block_wrapper_attributes() depends on WP_Block_Supports::$block_to_render state that is null when render_block is invoked directly from PHPUnit, so the three coverArt-fallback tests crashed with "Trying to access array offset on value of type null". Switch back to a plain class attribute escaped through esc_attr(); production output is identical and the PHPCS escaper rule is satisfied without an ignore comment. Also fix PHPCS MultipleStatementAlignment warnings on the $original_post / $GLOBALS['post'] pair in test_no_post_context_returns_empty_string.

arcangelini and others added 4 commits May 4, 2026 19:54

Add Podcast Episode block

4b323a6

Podcast Episode: split ternary __() calls so i18n extractor can read …

5ae6aa0

…string literals

robertbpugh self-assigned this May 5, 2026

robertbpugh requested a review from arcangelini May 5, 2026 23:06

github-actions Bot added [Block] Podcast Episode [Plugin] Jetpack Issues about the Jetpack plugin. https://wordpress.org/plugins/jetpack/ [Status] In Progress labels May 5, 2026

github-actions Bot added the [Status] Needs Author Reply We need more details from you. This label will be auto-added until the PR meets all requirements. label May 5, 2026

robertbpugh and others added 2 commits May 5, 2026 19:26

robertbpugh marked this pull request as ready for review May 6, 2026 14:12

Copilot AI review requested due to automatic review settings May 6, 2026 14:12

Copilot started reviewing on behalf of robertbpugh May 6, 2026 14:13 View session

Copilot AI reviewed May 6, 2026

View reviewed changes

robertbpugh and others added 4 commits May 6, 2026 10:27

Potential fix for pull request finding

266c716

Co-authored-by: Copilot Autofix powered by AI <175728472+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>

Potential fix for pull request finding

a0313a6

Co-authored-by: Copilot Autofix powered by AI <175728472+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>

Potential fix for pull request finding

e175206

Co-authored-by: Copilot Autofix powered by AI <175728472+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>

Copilot started work on behalf of robertbpugh May 6, 2026 14:30 View session

Address PR review comments: coverArt guard, TRANSCRIPT_TYPE_OPTIONS i…

246b6cf

…18n, PHPUnit tests Agent-Logs-Url: https://github.com/Automattic/jetpack/sessions/fb9995d0-fe14-48cb-9045-c12c05d7b263 Co-authored-by: robertbpugh <52668747+robertbpugh@users.noreply.github.com>

Copilot finished work on behalf of robertbpugh May 6, 2026 14:38

Podcast Episode: use get_block_wrapper_attributes for class+style output

e10ceac

github-actions Bot added the [Tests] Includes Tests label May 6, 2026

robertbpugh added 2 commits May 6, 2026 10:48

Podcast Episode: use null coalescing for $original_post (Phan)

381cc4c

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[Alternate] Podcast Episode block: post-bound (single source of truth)#48546

[Alternate] Podcast Episode block: post-bound (single source of truth)#48546
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