Ability to get the same behavior as the hidden widget in a custom widget

[papandreou]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I would like to create a version of my uuid widget that does not render a control or a preview, similar to the hidden widget. I need to use it in various nested settings where having a visible widget crowds up the screen too much.

However, it appears that the hidden widget achieves it hidden-ness by being special cased in various places:

• https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/blob/b1e490dce5dfaa7dceaf85d710275d67f5dae687/packages/netlify-cms-core/src/components/Editor/EditorControlPane/EditorControlPane.js#L55
• https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/blob/b1e490dce5dfaa7dceaf85d710275d67f5dae687/packages/netlify-cms-core/src/components/Editor/EditorControlPane/EditorControlPane.js#L27
• https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/blob/b1e490dce5dfaa7dceaf85d710275d67f5dae687/packages/netlify-cms-core/src/components/Editor/EditorPreviewPane/EditorPreview.js#L7
• https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms/blob/b1e490dce5dfaa7dceaf85d710275d67f5dae687/packages/netlify-cms-core/src/components/Editor/EditorPreviewPane/EditorPreview.js#L7

... and a few more.

Describe the solution you'd like

That widgets can somehow opt into being hidden and receive the same treatment as the hidden widget.

(Although I guess that would mean that my hack to call onChange in componentDidMount wouldn't work, but hopefully we can find a way to avoid that :)

Describe alternatives you've considered

To just live with all those id fields being visible in my editor components.
Alternatively to use the hidden widget with a default function (suggested in #1407), but for my use case that's presently blocked by something like #1662 as default values for nested fields don't seem to work at all right now.

[tomrutgers]

I think it would make a lot of sense to have a visible: false property as part of the widget configuration. And to have a uuid widget for that matter.

[Undistraction]

FWIW the approach I outline in #1975 would remove the need for a uuid widget completely, allowing the field to use a widget type of hidden, but I think decoupling the hiddenness from the type of widget makes a lot of sense.

[erquhart]

This is covered in #1409.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[erquhart]

#1409 is mostly largely implemented but still pending a few specific features. This issue will stay open to cover the addition of a visible config property for widgets, which will default to true and hide the widget in the UI when false, as the hidden widget currently does.