Block failing to render in editor

[BenHarris]

When attempting to render a block in the editor, the following error is displayed when the request size is greater than the web servers' limit (LimitRequestLine on Apache, defaulting to 8190):

I hit the issue when building a team block with a repeater, where each of the 10 team members has some metadata and a bio.

It seems to me that the best solution would be to switch to using POST rather than GET.

[kienstra]

Thanks for bringing this up!

Hi @BenHarris, Thanks for opening this. Could you please help with some questions?

1. Does that 'Error loading block' display appear only in the 'preview' display of the block, like:

2. Does the 'control' display still work:

3. Is the error occurring when making a POST request in your environment?

In my environment, it looks like it makes a GET request for the 'preview' display (ServerSideRender):

Let me see if there's a way around this, though there probably won't be a quick fix. It uses ServerSideRender from Gutenberg.

As you might have seen, there have been issues when a block has a lot of content, like in #254.

[BenHarris]

Hey @kienstra,

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Not quite sure what you mean

Sorry, didn't see that issue. It is the same problem, only I found the root cause!

[kienstra]

Hi @BenHarris, Thanks, that helps!

It seems to me that the best solution would be to switch to using POST rather than GET.

Thanks, where do you see that it's making a POST request? Locally, it looks like it's making a GET request, though I could be wrong:

[kienstra]

Ah, sorry. You're saying it should switch to use POST instead of GET.

[kienstra]

I'll see if that might help. It would involve reimplementing ServerSideRender, so I'm not sure about it.

[kienstra]

@lukecarbis pointed out that this Gutenberg issue is related: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/16396

[lukecarbis]

Closing in favour of https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/16396.

[kienstra]

Another user just reported this in Slack.

We might look at forking ServerSideRender, and registering a POST endpoint for it, as suggested in https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/16396#issuecomment-508709339

[lukecarbis]

Reopening since this is an active bug that isn't resolved.

[kienstra]

Yeah, this keeps coming up.

As mentioned in https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/16396#issuecomment-508709339, one solution might be making a Core patch and a Gutenberg PR. But I don't think those are likely to be merged, as WordPress doesn't recommend ServerSideRender.

We could fork ServerSideRender, and register a POST endpoint for it, as suggested in https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/16396#issuecomment-508709339. But then there would be 2 endpoints registered for each post, one through the register_block_type() call, and the POST endpoint that we add.

This might have scaling issues, and would probably be overkill for most users.

[Foine]

I don't know if it helps, but I do not have that issue with the 1.4.1 version of block lab.

So I stick with that version beacause all of my blocks aren't displaying with version 1.5 and above.

[kienstra]

Hi @Foine, Thanks for bringing that up.

Hm, it's strange that the issue didn't appear in 1.4.1. Do you remember what the console error was when that error appeared?

[kienstra]

Hi @BenHarris,

Sorry this has taken so long, and hope you're doing well.

If you're still interested, could you please test a fix for the issue?

https://github.com/getblocklab/block-lab/pull/524#issuecomment-608972897

Thanks, and have a great weekend.

[BenHarris]

Hi @kienstra,

No problem at all!

Have just tested and it worked as expected 👍 great work!

[kienstra]

Thanks, @BenHarris! That helps a lot having you test it, glad that it works.

It'll probably be in our next release.