Content Area Schema

A content area is a flat array of element objects. Bricks uses three independent content areas per page (header, content, and footer), each stored in its own post meta key. The array is flat (not nested): parent-child relationships are expressed via the parent and children fields on each element.

For the structure of each element in the array, see the Element schema.

JSON Schema

{
  "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
  "$id": "bricks://global/content-area",
  "schemaVersion": "2.2.1",
  "title": "Bricks Content Area",
  "description": "A Bricks content area (header, content, or footer) is a flat array of elements with parent-child references.",
  "type": "array",
  "items": {
    "type": "object",
    "_ref": "See the Element structure section in the data model overview.",
    "description": "A Bricks element as stored in any content area (header, content, footer). Properties: id, name, parent, children, settings, selectors, label, themeStyles."
  }
}

Content areas

A Bricks page (or any post type using Bricks) stores its elements across three independent content areas:

Content area	WordPress post meta key	Description
Header	_bricks_page_header_2	Header template elements
Content	_bricks_page_content_2	Main page/post content
Footer	_bricks_page_footer_2	Footer template elements

All three use the exact same data structure: an array of elements as described in the Element schema.

Storage

These are stored as serialized arrays in the wp_postmeta table.

Data	Meta key	PHP constant
Header elements	_bricks_page_header_2	BRICKS_DB_PAGE_HEADER
Content elements	_bricks_page_content_2	BRICKS_DB_PAGE_CONTENT
Footer elements	_bricks_page_footer_2	BRICKS_DB_PAGE_FOOTER

Flat array structure

Elements reference each other by ID rather than nesting physically. A root-level element has "parent": 0; all others reference their parent’s id. The children array on each element lists its direct children in order. This makes it easy to reorder, move, or flatten elements without restructuring a tree.

[
  { "id": "aaa111", "name": "section", "parent": 0, "children": ["bbb222"], "settings": {} },
  { "id": "bbb222", "name": "heading", "parent": "aaa111", "children": [], "settings": { "text": "Hello" } }
]

The array may also contain component instances (identifiable by the presence of a cid field). See Components for details.