Snippet: How to lock blocks and prevent your users from unlocking them

[bph]

Discussed in #342

^{Originally posted by ndiego November 18, 2024}
This snippet would provide a very brief overview of the Block Locking API and then show developers how to prevent unlocking in specific contexts:

Post types:

add_filter( 'block_editor_settings_all', function( $settings, $context ) {
    if ( $context->post && 'page' === $context->post->post_type ) {
        $settings['canLockBlocks'] = false;
    }

    return $settings;
}, 10, 2 );

User permissions:

add_filter( 'block_editor_settings_all', function( $settings ) {
    $settings['canLockBlocks'] = current_user_can( 'edit_theme_options' );

    return $settings;
} );

The snippet will also show how to disable access to the Code Editor, so users cannot manipulate the attributes directly.

[ndiego]

This snippet is ready for its first review. Here's the draft: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ok6K0cvpCSMwkOgs_lFWC0xCTjyCgMPZaMuocF9C87o/edit?tab=t.0

[bph]

A nice, conscise 360° on Block locking and how to control it. Made an editing suggestion and also suggested another link to shorted the UI paragraph, to keep it even more conscise :-)

[ndiego]

A nice, conscise 360° on Block locking and how to control it. Made an editing suggestion and also suggested another link to shorted the UI paragraph, to keep it even more conscise :-)

Perfect, thanks. This allowed me to trim the majority of that paragraph.

[ryanwelcher]

Second review done. Ready to go!

[bph]

Pre-publishing checklist: (updated 1/29/2024)

• Post Title and subheaders in sentence case
• Are Category or Categories selected?
• Are Tags identifies?
• Is there an explicit Excerpt?
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• For TOC us the Pattern under Developer Blog > Table of contents
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• Props added? (See Guidelines)
• add copy for a social post as comment to this issue (example)
  🙌 Publish! 📗

Post-publishing checklist

• add Props for reviews to #props channel in WP Slack (Example) (use Slack handles)
• Add the label "post to social" to the issue
• close the issue with a comment to link to the published post
• close the accompanying discussion with the link to the published post.

[ndiego]

The snippet has been published: https://developer.wordpress.org/news/snippets/how-to-lock-wordpress-blocks-and-prevent-unlocking/

Social Copy:

In this article on the Developer Blog, Learn how to lock blocks in WordPress and prevent your users from unlocking them. The code snippets provided are great for maintaining design consistency.