🚧 Theme JSON: resolve ref paths in get_raw_data()

[ramonjd]

🚧 Very naive and rough approach for #49715

What?

Testing out how we can resolve ref paths for every style value in the theme json tree when calling get_raw_data()

TODO:

• Tests
• Should we make ref resolution optional? After all the method is called get_raw_data, emphasis on "RAW"

Why?

See: #49715

How?

Testing Instructions

See: #49715 for now

[oandregal]

It doesn't look like we can use get_raw_data, given it is part of the merge process: each origin will be resolved only taking into account its own data. This can be reproduced with the instructions at this issue (make the site title invert the global colors: uses global background as text and global text as background).

No user changes	With user changes

Note how the site title retains the inverted colors from the theme (black & white) instead of using the new background defined by the user

[oandregal]

More braindump. In addition to the merge method, there are a few other places where we use this:

• duotone: though references are not working there.
• style variations: used in the global styles REST endpoint (site editor) and something related to font management.
• WP_Theme_JSON_Data: to pass data to theme.json filters. Consumers of those filters need to be aware of the references and work with them properly. We cannot resolve them at this point, because they're needed in later stages.
• The global styles REST endpoint. This is to expose user data (main use case: site editor). The site editor should be able to work with references, hence we need to send them to the client without being resolved.

All these places but duotone need the references unresolved, as they are used at some point via the REST endpoint to send data to the site editor.

[oandregal]

I'm thinking we should close this exploration and focus on different next steps.

Thanks for taking the time to explore, Ramon!

[ramonjd]

Thanks for investigating this one @oandregal 🙇