WordPress Playground now loads GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ development branches directly in your browser. Test the latest trunk changes or explore feature branches without creating a pull request or setting up a local environment.

This solves a common challenge: testing bleeding-edge Gutenberg development typically requires cloning repositories, running build scripts, and managing local installations. Now you can skip all that.

Why does this matter?

New features land trunk daily, and experimental work occurs in feature branches before being merged into pull requests. Previously, you could only preview specific PRs in Playground, and now you can preview any branch related to a pull request.

This opens new possibilities:

• Test the Gutenberg trunk branch to catch issues before they reach release.
• Explore Gutenberg experimental features and fixes before they’re merged.

How do you preview branches?

Playground introduces two new Query API parameters gutenberg-branch. Add them to your Playground URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org to load specific branches.

Preview Gutenberg trunk or a specific feature branch:

https://playground.wordpress.net/?gutenberg-branch=trunk

Other branches:

https://playground.wordpress.net/?gutenberg-branch=add/new-feature

What about pull requests?

Pull request previewing still works exactly as before for Gutenberg and WordPress coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.. If you know the PR number, use:

https://playground.wordpress.net/?core-pr=9500
https://playground.wordpress.net/?gutenberg-pr=73010

What should you know?

When you preview a branch, Playground loads the latest available build artifact from GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ Actions. If GitHub Actions is still building the most recent commit, Playground uses the next available build. This means you might see changes from a few commits back, not the absolute latest code. This approach strikes a balance between freshness and reliability.

This feature works anywhere you use the Playground Query APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways., ideally, for testing and bug reporting. The playground can be embedded for educational purposes in future releases. For example, if you’re documenting a new Gutenberg feature still in trunk, link directly to a Playground instance that demonstrates it.

Start testing today

The WordPress and Gutenberg teams constantly ship improvements. With branch previewing, you can explore these changes the moment they merge, report issues early, and contribute to WordPress development—all from your browser.

Try it now and learn more about Query API documentation.

The WordPress Playground CLICLI Command Line Interface. Terminal (Bash) in Mac, Command Prompt in Windows, or WP-CLI for WordPress. version 3.0.20 is live! This update introduces powerful new PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. https://www.php.net/manual/en/preface.php. extensions (ImageMagick, SOAP, and AVIF GD Support) that enhance the capabilities of your in-browser WordPress instances, making the playground compatible with plugins and themes that utilize these extensions. Let’s dive into what’s new.

ImageMagick: Your All-in-One Image Processing

Many developers rely on ImageMagick for advanced image manipulation, and now you can use it directly within WordPress Playground. The new ImageMagick extension supports a wide range of formats, including: JPG, PNG, GIF, WEBP (for PHP 8.0 and newer).

This addition increases the PHP bundle size by approximately 4.39MB, a worthwhile trade-off for the power and flexibility it provides. We are also exploring the possibility of shipping ImageMagick in the browser in the future for even better performance.

SOAP Extension: Connecting to Web Services Made Easy

The SOAP extension now supports all PHP builds, allowing you to connect your Playground instances to SOAP-based web services.

Getting started is simple. Here’s a quick example of how you can use the SOAP client to convert temperatures:

<?php
try {
    // Create SOAP client that in theory Convert Celsius to Fahrenheit
    $client = new SoapClient('<your SOAP endpoint>');
    
    // Submit the values to the client
    $celsius = 25;
    $params = array('Celsius' => $celsius);
    $response = $client->CelsiusToFahrenheit($params);
    
    echo "Input: {$celsius}°C\n";
    echo "Result: {$response->CelsiusToFahrenheitResult}°F\n";
    
} catch (SoapFault $e) {
    echo "SOAP Error: " . $e->getMessage() . "\n";
} catch (Exception $e) {
    echo "Error: " . $e->getMessage() . "\n";
}

In the previous version of @wp-playground/cli, this code, it triggered a Fatal Error, and now it executes successfully. 

AVIF Support in the GD Extension

The GD extension in WordPress Playground now supports AVIF (AV1 Image File Format) for PHP 8.1 and newer. This enables you to convert images to and from the AVIF format, which provides higher compression, smaller file sizes compared to JPEG, and also supports transparency.

Now WordPress Playground compiles the libaom (AV1 codec) and libavif libraries (version 0.8.2) to WebAssembly, this is a significant technical achievement that brings modern image processing directly to your browser.

Two new functions are available for builders on WordPress Playground from the GD extension:

• imagecreatefromavif: Reads an AVIF image and returns a GdImage instance for manipulation.
• imageavi: Outputs or saves an image in AVIF format. With the possibility of setting quality and speed compression as parameters.

For more information, check the imageavif and imagecreatefromavif guides.

Practical Example

Convert a JPEG to AVIF:

<?php
// Load JPEG image
$image = imagecreatefromjpeg('photo.jpg');

// Save as AVIF with custom quality
imageavif($image, 'photo.avif', quality: 85);

// Clean up
imagedestroy($image);

echo "Converted photo.jpg to photo.avif\n";

Conclusion

These additions enhance the WordPress Playground’s compatibility with a broader range of plugins and themes. Is there another pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party you feel is essential to the WordPress ecosystem? Please let us know in the comments. 

To use the WordPress Playground’s latest version, run the command:

$ npx @wp-playground/cli@latest server

To learn more about @wp-playground/cli at the Playground CLI guide. You create! Share your projects and feedback with us in the  #playground Slack channel.