Block Type

Block type is the fundamental classification of a block in CE.SDK. It is assigned when the block is created, cannot be changed after, and determines what properties the block has, which APIs apply to it, and how the engine renders it.

Type is what tells the engine: “this is text, route text operations to it” or “this is a graphic, give it shape and fill.” Different types support different APIs.

CE.SDK has eight block types.

• scene is the root of the hierarchy. There is always exactly one scene block in the engine. It is created by the Scene API, not the Block API.
• page is a canvas inside a scene. Pages hold the blocks that make up the design. In video mode each page also has duration and timeline properties.
• graphic is the unified type for any visual content: images, videos, shapes, stickers. A graphic block is built from a shape that defines its outline and a fill that defines what renders inside. This is the most common block type in active scenes.
• text is editable text with font, color, alignment, effects, and support for variable tokens for dynamic content.
• group is a container with no fill or shape of its own. Wraps multiple child blocks so they move and transform together.
• track is a video-specific container that sequences clips in time on the timeline.
• audio is an audio clip with volume, speed, and trim.
• cutout defines a masked or cut-out area within a composition. Also used for die-cut print paths.
• stack arranges its children in a line along an axis with optional spacing.

Type is structural: it defines what APIs apply to the block. Kind is semantic: it labels what the block represents in product terms.

A block is always one type. It can also have a kind (an arbitrary label like “logo,” “headline,” or “product-image”) that identifies it for product-level logic without affecting which APIs apply. Two graphic blocks with different kinds (say, “logo” and “product-image”) use the same Block API methods, but the product code treats them differently because of what the kind tells it.

See block-kind for how kinds are used in templates and automation. See block for the block primitive itself, and block-hierarchy for how blocks of these types nest.

The Block API provides a find-by-type method that returns all blocks of a given type currently in the scene. This is what code does when it needs to iterate over all text blocks to inject variables, or all page blocks to export each page individually.

For more specific targeting, kind-based or UUID-based queries are usually preferable. Type-based queries are useful when the goal really is “every text block, regardless of role in the design.”