This thread is intended to help you by investigating as much as I’m able to so you don’t have to and you can simply point me in the right direction to take a deeper look.

In the previous topic post, which was closed, you said “Finally had a chance to look at this. It doesn’t look like Page Builder is doing things the WordPress way, so we won’t be able to support using Piklist Widgets.” and then the topic was closed.

When you responded to this thread you said “We haven’t even looked at this issue…”.

What did you conclude when you responded to the previous thread? These statements don’t, at least on the surface, seem to be consistent so I wonder if you could just say a few words about what you already know about this problem.

The best explanation I’ve found so far seems to be:

https://www.wpbeaverbuilder.com/support/q/support-for-advanced-custom-fields-5-fields-in-widgets/

I wonder if you could confirm that this is a plausible explanation.

After a little research, it sounds like most page builders (and there are at least three where folks have asked why piklist does not working with their builder (I’d have to search again to find them more specifically). In the SiteOrigin case, they have one developer on the builder but it was mentioned that they would be happy to talk about the cause if someone from piklist were to have a conversation.

So here’s my take (and I’m not asking for anything other than your thoughts here):

1) The builders seem to expect some kind of client-side entity/class reference/name which they use to instantiate widgets?
2) Does this imply JavaScript code?
3) If I wanted to generate suitable client-side code what would it look like? I don’t have enough experience with standard widgets to know what their life-cycle (by this I mean the life-cycle sequence – creation, initialization, data hydration, execution, rendering, cleanup, etc). just yet but I can maybe dig around a bit.

I presume if I just overwrite the plugin directory with the beta zip that will be sufficient to upgrade?

BTW: When I assimilate new technologies I tend to write a few simple utilities that make it easier to express some central concepts. This helps me work through the details more deeply than I would otherwise and provides some basic tools I might use if I find them practical, so The first thing I wrote was a FieldBuilder that uses the fluent builder pattern. I’ll flesh this out and probably write a blog about it.

Usage follows this approach, where the first example uses the build call to get a constructed array and the second uses some shortcuts for common use cases.

$field1 = CDEFieldBuilder::create('text')
  ->name('cde_test')
  ->label('Test field')
  ->value('Value')
  ->description('Description text')
  ->help('Help text')
  ->attr('class', 'text')
  ->build();
  
piklist('field', $field1);

CDEFieldBuilder::select('cde_select', 'Select field', 'option2')
  ->hints('Description and help text')
  ->choice('option1', "Value 1")
  ->choice('option2', "Value 2")
  ->choice('option3', "Value 3")
  ->field();

I’m still debating whether the first case is actually more compact than the array declarations but the second certainly is. (hints uses a single value as both the description and help text, a lazy way of quickly prototyping, but it takes two parameters as well. I find this slightly easier to read.

The builder code is simple and looks like this:

class CDEFieldBuilder {
  
  private $building = array();
  
  function __construct($type) {
    $this->building['type'] = $type;
  }
  
  // STATIC CREATION
  
  public static function create($type) {
    return new CDEFieldBuilder($type);
  }
  
  public static function text($name, $label, $value = '') {
    return CDEFieldBuilder::create('text')->common($name, $label, $value);
  }
  
  public static function select($name, $label, $value = '') {
    return CDEFieldBuilder::create('select')->common($name, $label, $value);
  }
  
  // FLUENT ATTRIBUTES
  
  public function name($name) {
    $this->building['field'] = $name;
    return $this;
  }
  
  public function label($label) {
    $this->building['label'] = $label;
    return $this;
  }
  
  public function value($value) {
    $this->building['value'] = $value;
    return $this;
  }
  
  // Combine the most common properties
  public function common($name, $label, $value = '') {
    $this->building['field'] = $name;
    $this->building['label'] = $label;
    $this->building['value'] = $value;
    return $this;
  }
  
  public function description($description) {
    $this->building['description'] = $description;
    return $this;
  }
  
  public function help($help) {
    $this->building['help'] = $help;
    return $this;
  }
  
  // Combine description and help (same if only one provided)
  public function hints($description, $help = NULL) {
    if ($help == NULL) {
      $help = $description;
    }
    $this->building['description'] = $description;
    $this->building['help'] = $help;
    return $this;
  }
  
  public function attributes($attributes) {
    $this->building['attributes'] = $attributes;
    return $this;
  }
  
  // ADD SINGLE ATTRIBUTE
  public function attr($name, $value) {
    if (!isset($this->building['attributes'])) {
      $this->building['attributes'] = array();
    }
    $this->building['attributes'][$name] = $value;
    return $this;
  }
  
  // ADD SINGLE CHOICE
  public function choice($name, $value) {
    if (!isset($this->building['choices'])) {
      $this->building['choices'] = array();
    }
    $this->building['choices'][$name] = $value;
    return $this;
  }
  
  // GET BUILT ARRAY OR ADD IT AS A PIKLIST FIELD 
  
  public function build() {
    return $this->building;
  }

  public function field() {
    return piklist('field', $this->building);
  }
}

Follow up: I am able to see the output from the widget. Some kind of caching problem maybe? The two points I raised are still worth asking about and I would love to hear about the plugin life-cycle and whether the blank widget view in WordPress admin is a known issue.

PS: I hope my mention of experience in the post is not take as arrogant. I find it helpful to know what a developer’s experience is when trying to explain things myself and figured this would provide some context to anyone who responds.