Connectors: preload REST API responses on the Connectors screen by westonruter · Pull Request #77353 · WordPress/gutenberg

westonruter · 2026-04-15T04:04:07Z

What?

The Connectors screen (options-general.php?page=options-connectors-wp-admin) fires several REST API requests after hydration, delaying the Largest Contentful Paint:

Specifically: GET /wp/v2/settings (site entity), OPTIONS /wp/v2/plugins (the canUser( 'create', 'plugin' ) check), a hardcoded GET /wp/v2/plugins/ai/ai used by the AI-plugin callout, and one GET /wp/v2/plugins/<basename> per registered connector — five sequential round-trips with the default connectors.

Why?

These responses are all trivially knowable at render time on the server, so they should be embedded in the initial HTML via createPreloadingMiddleware rather than re-fetched by the client after hydration. This also reduces the number of requests on the server, reducing server load.

Measured impact (median LCP over 10 runs)

Scenario	Trunk	This PR	Δ
Fast 4G	1523 ms	1150 ms	−373 ms (≈24.5%)
No throttling	743 ms	518 ms	−225 ms (≈30.3%)

How?

Adds a {page-slug}-wp-admin_preload_paths filter to the wp-build page-wp-admin template so any generated admin page can register page-specific preload paths. Hooks it in the Connectors loader to preload the five paths listed in What? above (the existing hardcoded preload in the template only covers the root site fields, not the settings entity the UI actually resolves, so /wp/v2/settings is added too).

After the change, none of the connector-related REST requests fire on page load — they are served from the preload middleware:

The two remaining requests come from @wordpress/core-abilities, which Gutenberg enqueues on every admin page — out of scope here, but a candidate for similar preloading.

Use of AI Tools

AI assistance: Yes
Tool(s): Claude Code
Model(s): Opus 4.6
Used for: Investigation, implementation, performance benchmarking, PR description composition

The Connectors screen (options-connectors-wp-admin) previously fired several REST API requests after hydration — site settings, a plugin capability check, and one plugin record per registered connector — delaying first paint. Add a `{page-slug}-wp-admin_preload_paths` filter to the wp-build page-wp-admin template so any generated admin page can register page-specific preload paths. Hook it in the Connectors loader to preload `/wp/v2/settings`, `OPTIONS /wp/v2/plugins`, `/wp/v2/plugins/ai/ai?context=edit` (for the AI plugin callout), and `/wp/v2/plugins/<basename>?context=edit` for each registered connector with a plugin file. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

github-actions · 2026-04-15T04:35:14Z

Flaky tests detected in 2d6811f.
Some tests passed with failed attempts. The failures may not be related to this commit but are still reported for visibility. See the documentation for more information.

🔍 Workflow run URL: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/actions/runs/27515021732
📝 Reported issues:

[Flaky Test] shouldn't conflict with server-side autosave #78706 in /test/e2e/specs/editor/various/autosave.spec.js

gziolo

I haven't tested, but these changes look solid to me.

github-actions · 2026-04-16T08:50:42Z

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Co-authored-by: westonruter <westonruter@git.wordpress.org>
Co-authored-by: gziolo <gziolo@git.wordpress.org>
Co-authored-by: justlevine <justlevine@git.wordpress.org>
Co-authored-by: jorgefilipecosta <jorgefilipecosta@git.wordpress.org>
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justlevine · 2026-05-08T15:42:34Z

+	$preload_paths[] = '/wp/v2/plugins/ai/ai?context=edit';
+
+	// getEntityRecord( 'root', 'plugin', <basename> ) per connector in use-connector-plugin.ts.
+	if ( function_exists( 'wp_get_connectors' ) ) {


7.0 (and wp_get_connectors() ) is a pre-requesite for the AI plugin, and assumedly without we also don't care about prefetching wp/v2/settings or OPTIONS wp/v2/plugins.

Would it make sense to just early return at the top of the method instead of partially nesting this logic?

That said, if this is just about PHPStan (and the options-connectors...* filter won't even trigger otherwise ), then I'd just drop the always-true function_exists() and add a rule scoped // @phpstan-ignore <type> (<reason>)

Good observation. I opted to remove the function_exists() check entirely in f3269d2 because this options-connectors-wp-admin_preload_paths filter only applies on the connectors admin page which only exists in 7.0 anyway.

Co-authored-by: justlevine <justlevine@git.wordpress.org>

justlevine

lgtm

jorgefilipecosta

The change looks good to me, I verified the preloaded endpoint payloads are passed to the client and on the smoke tests I did things look ok.
This PR needs the backport changelog entry and the corresponding core ticket/PR.

westonruter · 2026-05-11T00:06:36Z

@jorgefilipecosta In testing this further, it seems the REST API preloading is not sufficient. In particular, it does not support preloading 404 responses. This means that it still does a REST API request for any plugin that has not been installed. If none of the plugins are installed, then there are always four 404 responses to the REST API:

I've addressed this in the core PR: WordPress/wordpress-develop#11790

westonruter · 2026-05-11T00:10:57Z

+
+	// AiPluginCallout in routes/connectors-home/ai-plugin-callout.tsx queries this
+	// hardcoded ID to check whether the WP AI plugin is installed/active.
+	$preload_paths[] = '/wp/v2/plugins/ai/ai?context=edit';


With WordPress/wordpress-develop#11790 this could become as follows to serve the 404 responses to the preload middleware:

$preload_paths[] = array( '/wp/v2/plugins/ai/ai?context=edit', 'GET', array( 200, 404 ) );

However, it would not be compatible with WP 6.9.

westonruter · 2026-05-11T00:11:38Z

+		// core-data's plugin entity uses the basename with `.php` stripped
+		// as the record key (see routes/connectors-home/use-connector-plugin.ts).
+		$basename        = preg_replace( '/\.php$/', '', plugin_basename( $connector_data['plugin']['file'] ) );
+		$preload_paths[] = '/wp/v2/plugins/' . $basename . '?context=edit';


Ditto above, but it would not be compatible with WP 6.9:

$preload_paths[] = array( '/wp/v2/plugins/' . $basename . '?context=edit', 'GET', array( 200, 404 ) );

westonruter · 2026-05-11T00:12:29Z

This PR needs the backport changelog entry and the corresponding core ticket/PR.

See f3269d2 and WordPress/wordpress-develop#11790

" This reverts commit 0065b16.

ellatrix · 2026-05-19T12:26:52Z

This was punted, so moving to next minor.

t-hamano

Can we move the code added to lib/experimental/connectors/load.php to lib/compat/wordpress-7.0/connectors.php to move this PR forward? lib/experimental/connectors no longer exists.

…7.0/connectors.php The lib/experimental/connectors directory no longer exists on trunk; its contents moved to lib/compat/wordpress-7.0/. Relocate the _gutenberg_connectors_preload_paths() function and its filter from the deleted lib/experimental/connectors/load.php into lib/compat/wordpress-7.0/connectors.php to resolve the merge conflict. Co-authored-by: t-hamano <wildworks@git.wordpress.org> Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>

westonruter · 2026-06-14T23:08:54Z

@t-hamano I've resolved the conflicts:

`trunk`	This PR

Note the non-precached 404 responses are addressed in WordPress/wordpress-develop#11790, within which zero REST API requests appear when accessing the Connectors screen.

westonruter · 2026-06-14T23:12:08Z

+	 * Pages that know which requests their JS will issue on mount can add
+	 * them here so the responses are embedded in the initial HTML rather
+	 * than fetched over the network after hydration.
+	 *


At first in keeping with #78826 it seems this is needed:

Suggested change

*

*

* @since 7.0.1

*

However, since this filter gets generated for every templated admin page, the docs would then incorrectly indicate 7.0.1 when a new admin page is added in a later release. So it seems this should be left out. This is a docs issue for these new admin routes.

westonruter and others added 2 commits April 14, 2026 20:15

Use more specific PHP type

1cadfe0

westonruter requested a review from spacedmonkey as a code owner April 15, 2026 04:04

westonruter added this to WordPress 7.0 Editor Tasks Apr 15, 2026

westonruter added [Type] Performance Related to performance efforts [Feature] Connectors screen Tracks connectors screen related tasks labels Apr 15, 2026

github-project-automation Bot moved this to 🔎 Needs Review in WordPress 7.0 Editor Tasks Apr 15, 2026

gziolo reviewed Apr 16, 2026

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gziolo added the Backport to WP 7.0 Beta/RC Pull request that needs to be backported to the WordPress major release that's currently in beta label Apr 16, 2026

This was referenced May 8, 2026

Site Editor: preload initial canvas data #78075

Open

Editor: Preload initial Site Editor canvas data WordPress/wordpress-develop#11766

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justlevine reviewed May 8, 2026

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Remove unnecesary wp_get_connectors() function exists check

f3269d2

Co-authored-by: justlevine <justlevine@git.wordpress.org>

justlevine approved these changes May 8, 2026

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jorgefilipecosta approved these changes May 10, 2026

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westonruter moved this from 🔎 Needs Review to 🎯 Needs Core Commit in WordPress 7.0 Editor Tasks May 10, 2026

westonruter mentioned this pull request May 11, 2026

Preload REST API responses for plugins on Connectors screen and add support for preloading non-OK responses WordPress/wordpress-develop#11790

Open

Add backport changelog

faa91e5

westonruter commented May 11, 2026

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westonruter requested a review from jorgefilipecosta May 11, 2026 00:12

westonruter added a commit to westonruter/wordpress-develop that referenced this pull request May 11, 2026

Revert "Add preload paths filter introduced in WordPress/gutenberg#77353

35123b5

" This reverts commit 0065b16.

ellatrix added Backport to WP Minor Release Pull request that needs to be backported to a WordPress minor release and removed Backport to WP 7.0 Beta/RC Pull request that needs to be backported to the WordPress major release that's currently in beta labels May 19, 2026

t-hamano moved this from 🎯 Needs Core Commit to 🐛 Punted to 7.0.1 in WordPress 7.0 Editor Tasks May 24, 2026

t-hamano moved this from 🐛 Punted to 7.0.1 to 🎯 Needs Core Commit in WordPress 7.0 Editor Tasks May 24, 2026

t-hamano reviewed Jun 3, 2026

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westonruter commented Jun 14, 2026

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-	 *
+	 *
+	 * @since 7.0.1
+	 *

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westonruter commented Apr 15, 2026 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

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Measured impact (median LCP over 10 runs)

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