[Playground Web] Prefetch initial wp-admin update checks by adamziel · Pull Request #2295 · WordPress/wordpress-playground

adamziel · 2025-06-23T09:21:03Z

This PR improves /wp-admin/ initial loading speed by pre-fetching all the api.wp.org/update-check requests.

Motivation

Enabling networking by default is a frequently requested feature. The only limiting factor is how /wp-admin/ takes 5-10 seconds to load for the first time because of all the api.wp.org requests it performs on the first visit. It checks for PHP and browser compatibility with the corrent WP version and for newer versions of plugins, themes, and WP core. That's 5 sequential requests in total.

It's typically not a problem on a server, but in Playground it can be painful: the requests are already slower (e.g. due to preflight) and also the user experiences the slowdown every time they create a new Playground. This PR alleviates that pain.

Implementation

This PR parallelizes this initial burst of 5 network requests. Here's how:

After WordPress is set up, we call all the update checks, remember the requests, and respond with error 500 without actually interacting with the network:

wp_check_browser_version();
wp_check_php_version();
wp_update_plugins();
wp_update_themes();
wp_version_check();

Then, we initiate all these requests in parallel via Promise.all([ fetch(request1), fetch(request2), ... ]). We don't actually block the boot on the completion of these requests. We only initiate them and store the promises for later.

When WordPress runs these network requests again on the initial /wp-admin/ load, we reuse the pre-initialized promises.

Testing instructions

Open Playground on WordPress homepage
Confirm there's five update-related fetch() requests
Go to wp-admin
Confirm there are no update-related fetch() requests
Confirm the admin dashboard loaded relatively quickly

…initializes the slow wp-admin requests

…quests

adamziel · 2025-06-23T10:21:25Z

        'https://playground.wordpress.net',
        'http://localhost',
        'http://127.0.0.1',
+        'http://127.0.0.1:5400',


Turns out the local proxy wasn't proxying the network calls – the origin contains a port number

Maybe we could also clean up the port-less entries above

Actually no, I'll leave them for testing on port 80.

adamziel · 2025-06-24T08:55:40Z

This is a low-risk change. I'll go ahead and merge.

@fellyph

Enables the `networking` setting by default on playground.wordpress.net. It grants new Playgrounds network access without having to explicitly enable it. It can still be disabled. Having networking disabled by default is a performance optimization but also a major gotcha. Server-side WordPress typically has unrestricted network access. #2295 resolves the performance issue, removing the last blocker to changing the default setting. This PR also updates the documentation pages. Solves #1225 Solves #85 ## Testing instructions * Open local Playground and confirm the networking is enabled. * Play with the networking checkbox in Playground settings, confirm you can disable and re-enable network access. * Ditto for `?networking=yes|no` in the query params * Ditto for `{"features": { "networking": true | false }}` in Blueprints cc @fellyph

brandonpayton · 2025-06-25T19:22:16Z

+		/**
+		 * Do not await these promises. They're already in the cache at this point,
+		 * and calling await setupFetchNetworkTransport() is only meant to await
+		 * loading these requests into the cache, not await the responses. If the caller
+		 * wants to await the responses they can call Promise.all() on the returned
+		 * array.
+		 */
+		return fetchPromises;
+	}


Nice comment.

@draganescu

#2295 added pre-fetching of all the api.wp.org/update-check requests in Playground Web. Unfortunately, it also generates some noise in the output: ``` [04-Aug-2025 17:10:25 UTC] PHP Warning: wp_update_plugins(): An unexpected error occurred. Something may be wrong with WordPress.org or this server’s configuration. If you continue to have problems, please try the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/forums/">support forums</a>. (WordPress could not establish a secure connection to WordPress.org. Please contact your server administrator.) in /wordpress/wp-includes/functions.php on line 135 [04-Aug-2025 17:10:25 UTC] PHP Warning: wp_update_themes(): An unexpected error occurred. Something may be wrong with WordPress.org or this server’s configuration. If you continue to have problems, please try the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/forums/">support forums</a>. (WordPress could not establish a secure connection to WordPress.org. Please contact your server administrator.) in /wordpress/wp-includes/functions.php on line 135 [04-Aug-2025 17:10:25 UTC] PHP Warning: wp_version_check(): An unexpected error occurred. Something may be wrong with WordPress.org or this server’s configuration. If you continue to have problems, please try the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/forums/">support forums</a>. (WordPress could not establish a secure connection to WordPress.org. Please contact your server administrator.) in /wordpress/wp-includes/functions.php on line 135 ``` This PR suppresses those warnings without suppressing other errors. cc @draganescu ## Testing instructions 1. Go to http://127.0.0.1:5400/website-server/?php=8.0 2. Confirm the warnings mentioned above are not present in the browser devtools

adamziel added 6 commits June 21, 2025 21:33

Draft: cache network calls to update endpoitns

30143e5

Setup the fetch() network transport using a separate class that also …

c78e05b

…initializes the slow wp-admin requests

Lint

587bbc7

Rename the test file

b1cb36f

Restore blueprints.phar

38d765f

Restore blueprints.phar

660f639

adamziel added [Aspect] Browser [Aspect] Networking [Type] UI / UX / User Experience labels Jun 23, 2025

adamziel changed the title ~~Browser: Prefetch wp-admin update checks~~ [Playground Web] Prefetch initial wp-admin update checks Jun 23, 2025

adamziel added 3 commits June 23, 2025 11:52

Preload update checks after running the blueprint

b1292a4

Clarify the method names

4798634

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/trunk' into prefetch-wp-admin-re…

b7affa9

…quests

adamziel marked this pull request as ready for review June 23, 2025 09:57

adamziel requested a review from a team as a code owner June 23, 2025 09:57

adamziel commented Jun 23, 2025

View reviewed changes

Formatting (tabs vs spaces)

9ba1982

adamziel mentioned this pull request Jun 23, 2025

[Web] Enable networking by default in Playground web #2296

Merged

adamziel added 3 commits June 23, 2025 12:39

Disable noPropertyAccessFromIndexSignature

b6df037

Resolve TS Type issue

d226b56

Merge branch 'trunk' into prefetch-wp-admin-requests

9290bdb

adamziel merged commit d5fc6f5 into trunk Jun 24, 2025

adamziel deleted the prefetch-wp-admin-requests branch June 24, 2025 08:55

brandonpayton reviewed Jun 25, 2025

View reviewed changes

This was referenced Aug 4, 2025

Silence wp_version_check() errors in Playground web #2452

Open

Suppress PHP warnings when pre-fetching WordPress updates #2458

Merged

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[Playground Web] Prefetch initial wp-admin update checks - #2295

[Playground Web] Prefetch initial wp-admin update checks#2295
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