WooCommerce Email Editor Development

This skill provides guidance for developing the WooCommerce block email editor.

When to Use This Skill

Invoke this skill when:

Setting up local development for the email editor
Working on email templates or transactional emails
Modifying the email editor PHP or JS packages
Testing email sending functionality

Development Environment Setup

1. Start WooCommerce wp-env

pnpm --filter=@woocommerce/plugin-woocommerce -- wp-env start

Site runs at http://localhost:8888 by default. If port 8888 is unavailable, wp-env assigns a different port. Check the startup output or run wp-env info to see your actual URL.

2. Start the watcher

Watches and builds admin JS files (including the email editor JS package) and syncs Email Editor PHP package changes:

pnpm --filter=@woocommerce/plugin-woocommerce watch:build:admin

3. Enable the block email editor feature

Visit http://localhost:8888/wp-admin/admin.php?page=wc-settings&tab=advanced&section=features and enable the block email editor.

4. Edit transactional emails

Visit http://localhost:8888/wp-admin/admin.php?page=wc-settings&tab=email

Email Testing with Mailpit

To test email sending locally, use Mailpit as a local SMTP server.

Configure SMTP

Add to plugins/woocommerce/.wp-env.override.json:

{
    "lifecycleScripts": {
        "afterStart": "./tests/e2e-pw/bin/test-env-setup.sh && wp-env run cli wp plugin install wp-mail-smtp --activate"
    },
    "config": {
        "WPMS_ON": true,
        "WPMS_MAILER": "smtp",
        "WPMS_SMTP_HOST": "host.docker.internal",
        "WPMS_SMTP_PORT": "1025",
        "WPMS_SMTP_AUTH": false,
        "WPMS_SMTP_SECURE": ""
    }
}

Start Mailpit

docker run --rm --name=mailpit -p 1025:1025 -p 8025:8025 -d axllent/mailpit

Or if the container already exists:

docker start mailpit

View emails

Open http://localhost:8025 to see captured emails.

Restart wp-env

After creating or modifying .wp-env.override.json, restart the environment:

pnpm --filter=@woocommerce/plugin-woocommerce -- wp-env start --update

Key Paths

Path	Description
`packages/php/email-editor/`	Email Editor PHP package
`packages/js/email-editor/`	Email Editor JS package
`plugins/woocommerce/.wp-env.override.json`	Local wp-env config (gitignored)

Building the Email Editor Package

To rebuild the JS package after changes:

pnpm --filter=@woocommerce/email-editor build

Testing the PHP Package

Run tests from the packages/php/email-editor/ directory.

Setup

cd packages/php/email-editor
wp-env start
composer dump-autoload

Run integration tests

wp-env run tests-cli --env-cwd=wp-content/plugins/email-editor ./vendor/bin/phpunit --configuration phpunit-integration.xml.dist

Run a specific test

wp-env run tests-cli --env-cwd=wp-content/plugins/email-editor ./vendor/bin/phpunit --configuration phpunit-integration.xml.dist --filter Table_Test

Linting the PHP Package

Run from the packages/php/email-editor/ directory.

PHPStan

cd tasks/phpstan && ./run-phpstan.sh

For PHP 7 compatibility:

cd tasks/phpstan && ./run-phpstan.sh php7

PHPCS

composer run phpcs

woocommerce-email-editor