As a contributor / author navigation block only shows a spinner

[spacedmonkey]

Description

As a contrubitor or author user, I create a navigation block and all is shown is a spinner. See video.

Step-by-step reproduction instructions

1. Login as a contributor user
2. Create new post
3. Create new navigation block
4. Spinner never disappears.

Screenshots, screen recording, code snippet

Screen.Recording.2021-11-07.at.20.43.46.mov

Environment info

• Chrome lastest
• Guternberg 11.8
• WordPress 5.8.1

Please confirm that you have searched existing issues in the repo.

Yes

Please confirm that you have tested with all plugins deactivated except Gutenberg.

Yes

[TimothyBJacobs]

We're going to fix part of this in the REST API by allowing anyone with CPT edit access to read this information. But we should investigate why there isn't an error message of some kind when that REST API request fails.

[getdave]

I'll take a look at the UI side of this.

[TimothyBJacobs]

Actually, can someone clarify (@youknowriad ?) whether any user should be able to use this block? This would expose all menu data to contributors and up which may be undesirable.

[youknowriad]

I'm not familiar with this block personally but yes, I believe like all blocks, it's supposed to be usable by everyone, so I guess we'd have to adapt its behavior (hide things) for contributors.

[getdave]

Yep. Several tasks will likely need to spin out of this one in terms of making sure the block adapts to different user types.

[getdave]

So as pointed out above I'm getting a 403 Forbidden for the Menus endpoint. This will get fixed but we should add a fallback in the UI which I will do now.

Ok it looks like the fallback in the UI is already in place it's just a bug with Core Data. I have a fix in #36353.

[TimothyBJacobs]

Thanks @youknowriad. Do you think it is acceptable that this block won't show the "Convert from an existing menu" UI for non-administrators?

[talldan]

👍 I think it's ok that it won't show that for classic menus. Looks like contributors can't access those menus anyway.

Also need to consider whether the user has access to the new wp_navigation post type. If they don't, they can't really edit a navigation block with the way it works right now.

Also, at the moment, wp admin shows the menu items for template parts and navigation menus for contributors, but both show a 'Sorry, you are not allowed to access this page.' message when clicking them:

[talldan]

Also need to consider whether the user has access to the new wp_navigation post type. If they don't, they can't really edit a navigation block with the way it works right now.

I was just checking how this might work for reusable blocks, and it looks like it doesn't 😬

A contributor can add a resuable block created by an admin, edit it, but they can't save it (tested in the post editor). Saving seems to throw an error:

Uncaught TypeError: this.props.setEntitiesSavedStatesCallback is not a function

So it seems there isn't much prior art for this kind of situation.