Since the introduction of Gutenberg, WordPress development has undergone a significant transformation. The shift from a primarily PHP-driven architecture to one that embraces modern JavaScript practices has introduced developers to a suite of powerful packages that form the backbone of today’s WordPress experience. Among these packages, @wordpress/components and @wordpress/block-editor often cause confusion for developers who are new to this ecosystem. While they may appear similar at first glance, they serve distinctly different purposes and understanding their differences is crucial for effective WordPress development.
The Evolution of WordPress Development
WordPress has been on a journey of modernization for several years now. The introduction of Gutenberg marked a pivotal moment in this evolution, signaling a move toward a more JavaScript-centric approach. This shift wasn’t merely cosmetic; it represented a fundamental rethinking of how WordPress content is created, edited, and displayed.
At the heart of this transformation lies a modular JavaScript architecture. WordPress now maintains dozens of JavaScript packages, each designed with specific responsibilities and capabilities. These packages follow a monorepo approach – they’re developed within a single repository but published as separate npm packages. This structure allows developers to pick and choose exactly what they need for their projects without carrying the burden of unnecessary code.
Diving Into @wordpress/components
The @wordpress/components package represents one of the most fundamental building blocks in the new WordPress JavaScript ecosystem. At its core, this package provides a comprehensive library of reusable UI components designed with WordPress’s unique needs and aesthetics in mind.
Think of @wordpress/components as the basic building blocks of the WordPress admin interface. These components range from simple elements like buttons, text inputs, and toggles to more complex interfaces such as modals, popovers, and color pickers. What makes these components special is their adherence to WordPress design principles, ensuring that anything built with them feels naturally at home within the WordPress admin.
The beauty of these components lies in their versatility. They aren’t tied to any specific context within WordPress. A Button component from this package is equally at home on a plugin settings page as it is within the block editor. This universality makes @wordpress/components incredibly valuable for developers who want to create interfaces that feel consistent with the core WordPress experience.
Accessibility is another strength of this package. WordPress has made significant strides in ensuring that its admin interface is accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. The components in this package inherit this commitment, with built-in keyboard navigation, screen reader support, and other accessibility features. For developers, this means that building accessible interfaces becomes less of a manual effort and more of an inherent quality of the tools they’re using.
Let’s consider a practical example. Imagine you’re developing a custom plugin that needs a settings page. Using components from @wordpress/components, you might create panels with collapsible sections, toggle controls for enabling or disabling features, text inputs for configuration values, and buttons for saving changes. All of these elements would automatically match the look and feel of WordPress, providing users with a familiar experience that feels like a natural extension of the platform.
The Specialized World of @wordpress/block-editor
While @wordpress/components focuses on providing general-purpose UI elements, @wordpress/block-editor serves a much more specialized role. This package is dedicated to the needs of the block editor specifically, offering components and utilities that understand and interact with WordPress blocks.
The block editor (Gutenberg) represents a paradigm shift in how content is created in WordPress. Instead of a single monolithic text area, content is now composed of discrete “blocks” – paragraphs, images, galleries, embeds, and countless other content types. Each block has its own unique properties, behaviors, and editing interfaces. This complexity requires specialized tools, which is precisely what @wordpress/block-editor provides.
The components in this package are designed with an inherent understanding of the block ecosystem. They know about concepts like block selection, focus states, and editing contexts. They’re aware of how blocks can be moved, inserted, removed, and transformed. This context-awareness enables them to provide sophisticated functionality that would be difficult or impossible to achieve with generic UI components alone.
Consider the RichText component – one of the most frequently used elements from @wordpress/block-editor. Unlike a standard text input, RichText understands formatting, handles keyboard shortcuts, manages selections, and integrates with the block editor‘s formatting toolbar. It knows how to convert its content to and from HTML, and it maintains consistency with WordPress’s content handling conventions. This level of specialization makes it perfect for block development but would be unnecessary overkill for a simple settings field.
Similarly, components like BlockControls and InspectorControls understand their place within the block editing experience. BlockControls renders a toolbar that appears when a block is selected, while InspectorControls populates the sidebar with block-specific settings. These components handle the complex task of placing their content in the right location within the editor interface, freeing developers from having to manage this themselves.
Block development often involves a combination of components from both packages. The specialized components from @wordpress/block-editor provide the block-specific functionality, while the general-purpose components from @wordpress/components handle basic UI needs within those specialized contexts. For instance, you might use InspectorControls from @wordpress/block-editor to place settings in the sidebar, but then use SelectControl and ToggleControl from @wordpress/components to create the actual interface elements within that sidebar.
Understanding the Relationship Between These Packages
The relationship between these two packages is hierarchical, not parallel. @wordpress/block-editor depends on @wordpress/components, building upon and extending its functionality for the specific context of block editing. The reverse is not true – @wordpress/components has no dependency on or awareness of @wordpress/block-editor.
This relationship becomes clearer when examining the composition of block editor components. Many of them incorporate or enhance components from @wordpress/components to provide block-specific capabilities while maintaining consistency with the broader WordPress admin interface.
Context-awareness represents another key difference between these packages. Components from @wordpress/components are generally context-agnostic – they don’t have built-in knowledge of where they’re being used or what they’re being used for. In contrast, components from @wordpress/block-editor are deeply context-aware, understanding concepts like the current block, selected blocks, available transformations, and editing modes.
This difference in context-awareness influences where and how these components should be used. The generic components can be used practically anywhere within the WordPress admin, from plugin settings pages to widget areas to custom admin screens. The block editor components, however, are designed specifically for use within the block editor context and may not function correctly when used elsewhere.
Practical Applications and Best Practices
Understanding when to use each package is crucial for effective WordPress development. As a general rule, use @wordpress/components when building any WordPress admin interface that isn’t directly related to block editing. This includes plugin settings pages, custom admin pages, metaboxes, and widgets.
For block development, the choice becomes more nuanced. Use components from @wordpress/block-editor when you need functionality that’s specific to the block editing experience, such as rich text editing, block selection handling, or toolbar controls. Within these block-specific interfaces, you’ll often still use components from @wordpress/components for basic UI elements like buttons, panels, and form controls.
Proper importing is essential when working with these packages. Always import components from their specific package rather than trying to access everything through a single import. This ensures that your dependencies are correctly tracked and that you’re not inadvertently including code that you don’t need.
// Good practice
import { Button, Panel, TextControl } from '@wordpress/components';
import { RichText, BlockControls } from '@wordpress/block-editor';
// Avoid this
import { Button, RichText } from '@wordpress/block-editor'; // Incorrect!
Another best practice is to minimize dependencies by only importing the specific components you need rather than the entire package. This helps reduce bundle size and improves performance, especially for plugins that might be used on sites with limited resources.
When developing blocks, take advantage of the specialized components provided by @wordpress/block-editor rather than trying to recreate their functionality using more basic components. These specialized components handle many complex tasks automatically, such as placing toolbar controls in the correct location and managing block selection states.
The Evolving WordPress Ecosystem
Both of these packages continue to evolve as WordPress development advances. The WordPress team regularly introduces new components, enhances existing ones, and sometimes deprecates older approaches in favor of better solutions. Staying current with these changes is important for maintaining modern, compatible WordPress extensions.
Recent trends include increased component abstraction, with more high-level components that combine functionality in useful ways. There’s also been a push for better TypeScript support, providing improved type definitions for a better developer experience. Enhanced customization options are making it easier to style and adapt components to specific needs, while performance improvements are reducing bundle sizes and improving rendering efficiency.
For developers working with blocks, understanding the interplay between these packages is becoming increasingly important. As the block editor ecosystem expands to include full-site editing, theme blocks, and pattern directories, the specialized capabilities of @wordpress/block-editor are becoming even more central to WordPress development.
Building with Confidence
The @wordpress/components and @wordpress/block-editor packages represent different layers in the WordPress JavaScript ecosystem, each with its own purpose and specialization. By understanding their differences and how they complement each other, developers can build more effective, efficient, and maintainable WordPress extensions.
The foundational nature of @wordpress/components makes it the go-to choice for creating consistent, accessible interfaces anywhere in the WordPress admin. Its generic UI building blocks provide the versatility needed for a wide range of admin interfaces, ensuring that they feel like natural extensions of WordPress itself.
The specialized focus of @wordpress/block-editor makes it indispensable for block development, providing the tools needed to create rich, interactive editing experiences that integrate seamlessly with the block editor. Its context-awareness and block-specific capabilities enable developers to create blocks that behave exactly as users would expect.
By leveraging both packages appropriately, WordPress developers can create experiences that are both powerful and familiar, extending WordPress in ways that feel natural and intuitive to users. As WordPress continues its evolution toward a more block-oriented future, mastery of these packages will become increasingly valuable for developers who want to stay at the forefront of WordPress development.
Whether you’re building a simple plugin or developing complex custom blocks, understanding the right tool for the job will make your development process more efficient and your code more maintainable. With @wordpress/components and @wordpress/block-editor in your toolkit, you’re well-equipped to create WordPress experiences that are modern, accessible, and truly integrated with the platform.