Leaderboard

Happy New Year! This week we've got ProcessWire 3.0.209 released on the dev branch. Consider this version a release candidate (RC1) for the master/main branch. Relative to 3.0.208, this version contains primarily issue resolutions and minor improvements (commit log). If you have a chance to test it, please let us know if you run into any major issues by reporting them here. So long as no new major issues surface, by this time next week my hope is that we'll have the dev branch merged to the master/main branch for version 3.0.210. This week one of my clients pointed me to https://chat.openai.com/ which is really quite interesting. It's an artificial intelligence that you can chat with, and it knows quite a lot about ProcessWire and how to code in ProcessWire. Though it knows a lot about a lot of different APIs, and actually a lot about everything, not just development related stuff. But I mention it here because of how it appears it's been trained fairly well in ProcessWire. When I asked it for examples of what CMSs it knows how to code for it told me WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and ProcessWire. I'd encourage you to get an OpenAI account to try it out, it can blow your mind. Ask it questions like how to develop a ProcessWire module, how to build a search engine in ProcessWire, how to use pagination in ProcessWire, or anything you can think of. It seems to have an answer for everything. The client that told me about it is currently using it to write AWS scripts for him, and he said it's saving him a lot of development time. What I also find interesting is not just how it seems to have an answer for everything, and that it knows how to code, but also that it makes mistakes pretty regularly, and recognizes those mistakes when you point them out... and apparently learns from them. That's basically how we work. For example, I asked it how to resize an image in ProcessWire and it explained through text and code examples how to use the size() method on image fields. But it also told me that I could use the $options argument to specify the type of resize interpolation (bicubic, linear, nearest, etc.) and ProcessWire has no such option. When I told it that, it apologized and corrected its code example, and also explained more details about the size() method's $options argument. There was another instance where it made a mistake (trying to do a PHP math operation within a string) and I explained that PHP doesn't support that. It essentially said "I know that, but my example doesn't do that". Then I asked it to double check its example because it didn't look right to me, and then it replied (paraphrased) "Oops, sorry, you are right, here's a corrected version." Anyway, it's just kind of funny to me that I'm talking to a computer with these kinds of interactions, and how it seems to "think" and learn a lot like we do. It will be interesting to see where this technology leads. Currently it is a free research preview, where I suppose we are helping to test the AI and help it learn, but it's very interesting and engaging just to talk with it. Also worth noting is that it does not have internet access (other than to chat with people). So it can't go and hunt down information from websites, actually making it that much more impressive in my mind.

Probably because ProcessWire has such a nice well-documented API ?. I played with it a bit and it knows how to build modules, but when I asked it to build an inputfield module, the code was what you might use for an inputfield on a page. I am trying to think of how to educate it with the correct context ?.

@ryan Thank you for one more year with PW. It would be great to hear about the PW roadmap for 2023. Been playing with GPT chat for almost a week, crazy stuff. AI will definitely affect humanity more than the invention of manufacturing and electricity

Enjoy New Years Eve! and have a Happy New Year!, Ryan.

@teppo This thing is apparently kind of an alpha or beta test, but it seems full of potential and kind of cool to imagine where it's headed when the issues are worked out. At the moment, it's odd and kind of funny with the mistakes that it makes. It seemingly just makes stuff up when it doesn't know the answer to something. It's like it has some kind of creative element to it or something, which made the behavior fascinating. It's completely different from any kind of computer interaction I've had before. I love the fact that it seems to know how to code ProcessWire stuff even if it's prone to mistakes. I've not experimented with AI, machine learning, neural networks, etc., but it makes me want to learn more about it.

So, I'm currently having a conversation with ChatGPT about a new module ? Feels weird to be honest: it's quick to answer, especially at first seemed absolutely certain that every answer was the correct one, and kept making obvious mistakes. But that being said: I could've taken the initial code, made a few changes here and there, and it would've been a functional module. Now, after some iterations, it's looking almost perfect. One problem I'm having is that the bot keeps stopping halfway through the answer. When I tried to confront if it about that, this is how it responded: Not sure we're quite on the same page here ? Anyway, it looks like I might be able to take the code provided by the bot, polish it a bit, and put it in use. Sure it required us a dozen tries or so to get here, I had to patiently keep pointing out mistakes and suggest actual hookable methods instead of the non-existing ones that it pulled out of thin air, but that is very impressive nevertheless. I can definitely see how this would be useful for something a little simpler ?

Won't say anything about how I do or would handle this particular topic but... -- I AM NOT A LAWYER -- In regards to ... 3.2.3 (a) (i): this seems to be the only part that would apply to the module's purpose by quite a far stretch. 3.2.3 (b): I found this: https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/terms/maps-service-terms which would allow caching some data for about 30 days, BUT it brings me to another questions: Do the Google Maps terms apply for reviews? 3.2.3 (c): this has almost nothing to do with reviews or this module. So... which API are you using? Is it the classic Google Maps API or some sub-API or maybe even Google Business (Review) API? Which API keys would I need to use your module?

Greetings, everyone! I want to tell you that the module is finished. I have one little concern, though: I planned to in include a save and preview function of the received data for debugging/development purpose. However this would violate the terms of the google maps platform as it seems: https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/terms 3.2.3 Restrictions Against Misusing the Services. (a) No Scraping. Customer will not export, extract, or otherwise scrape Google Maps Content for use outside the Services. For example, Customer will not: (i) pre-fetch, index, store, reshare, or rehost Google Maps Content outside the services; (ii) bulk download Google Maps tiles, Street View images, geocodes, directions, distance matrix results, roads information, places information, elevation values, and time zone details; (iii) copy and save business names, addresses, or user reviews; or (iv) use Google Maps Content with text-to-speech services. (b) No Caching. Customer will not cache Google Maps Content except as expressly permitted under the Maps Service Specific Terms. (c) No Creating Content From Google Maps Content. Customer will not create content based on Google Maps Content. For example, Customer will not: (i) trace or digitize roadways, building outlines, utility posts, or electrical lines from the Maps JavaScript API Satellite base map type; (ii) create 3D building models from 45° Imagery from Maps JavaScript API; (iii) build terrain models based on elevation values from the Elevation API; (iv) use latitude/longitude values from the Places API as an input for point-in-polygon analysis; (v) construct an index of tree locations within a city from Street View imagery; or (vi) convert text-based driving times into synthesized speech results. This also means that all the review scraper tools out there and the other strategies that we discussed here (fetch the reviews manually and save as page) are also not what google wants us to do. What do you think about that?

Yes, please! That's what I've been saying for a long time... Yes, please! That's the part that made me move away from AOS. I'm very happy without it btw - it hurt a little in the beginning but I'm not missing anything any more. For field/template edit links we have the great https://processwire.com/talk/topic/26537-adminhelperlinks-shortcut-links-to-edit-fields-and-template-directly-from-page-edit/ that has not caused a single issue in all of my pw instances. AOS on the other hand has cost me hours in finding bugs in my modules that turned out to be bugs in AOS. RockMigrations has the concept of "tweaks" where we can add micro-modules via single php files (https://github.com/baumrock/RockMigrations/tree/main/tweaks) and enable/disable them via GUI in the module's settings: Agreed, but don't forget that some features also need several hooks in place, so we need a combination of PHP/CSS/JS. I've also built https://github.com/baumrock/RockAdminTweaks some time ago which had the idea of making it possible to have all those little tweaks organised in a modular and manageable way. I don't see any reason why we would need support for 3 admin themes that all do the same and just look a little different. We have now the possibility to create custom styles of the backend without the need of creating a new theme (see https://github.com/baumrock/AdminStyleRock#wording-theme-vs-style ) I disagree ? Why do you think that or what exactly do you mean? But it's a little offtopic so if it's not easy to answer just ignore it. I agree ? Thx for making the list @dotnetic and pushing that topic forward!

Hello all, I wanted to share a proof of concept approach on how we can have an infinite scroll pattern without writing Javascript. We can achieve this with htmx. What you will get An overview page with a list of posts (PW pages). On initial page load 5 posts will be shown. When scrolling down and reaching the last post, another 5 posts will be loaded via AJAX in the background and appended after the last post until no more pages are found. Prerequisites You are using the delayed output strategy, with a _main.php appended. Just like using the default site profile when installing ProcessWire You are using markup regions, in my _main.php I have a div#content that will be used for the output of the posts Inside site/config.php $config->useMarkupRegions = true; Inside site/templates/_main.php <!-- main content --> <div id='content'> </div> For script loading I am using a custom $config->bodyScripts FilenameArray Inside site/config.php $config->bodyScripts = new FilenameArray(); Inside site/templates/_main.php before the closing </body> tag <?php foreach ($config->bodyScripts as $file) : ?> <script src="<?= $file ?>"></script> <?php endforeach ?> </body> PW page structure for this tutorial In the page tree I have a parent page "Posts" with template "posts". All child pages of that page have template "post" In the template "posts" settings in the "URLs" tab, check "Allow Page Numbers" and save. Needed for pagination. When viewing the page "Posts" all logic happens inside site/templates/posts.php site/templates/posts.php <?php namespace ProcessWire; // posts.php template file // add htmx js from site/templates/scripts $config->bodyScripts->add($config->urls->templates . 'scripts/htmx.min.js'); $limit = 5; $posts = $pages->find("template=post, limit={$limit}"); $lastPost = $posts->last(); $nextPageUrl = $page->url . $input->pageNumStr((int) $input->pageNum() + 1); $hxAttributes = array(); $hxAttributes[] = 'hx-get="' . $nextPageUrl . '"'; $hxAttributes[] = 'hx-trigger="revealed"'; $hxAttributes[] = 'hx-swap="afterend"'; ?> <?php if (!$config->ajax) : ?> <section pw-append="content" class="posts" hx-headers='{"X-Requested-With": "XMLHttpRequest"}'> <?php endif ?> <?php foreach ($posts as $post) : ?> <article class="post" <?php if ($post == $lastPost) echo implode(' ', $hxAttributes) ?>> <header> <h3><?= $post->title ?></h3> </header> </article> <?php endforeach ?> <?php if ($config->ajax) return $this->halt() ?> <?php if (!$config->ajax) : ?> </section> <?php endif ?> And that is all there is to it. Not a single line of Javascript, thanks to htmx. I followed the infinite scroll pattern from the official htmx examples. Now let's break the code down into easily digestible chunks // add htmx js from site/templates/scripts $config->bodyScripts->add($config->urls->templates . 'scripts/htmx.min.js'); This adds site/templates/scripts/htmx.min.js to our custom $config->bodyScripts FilenameArray so it will be loaded in _main.php. You can get the script here from unpkg.com. $limit = 5; $posts = $pages->find("template=post, limit={$limit}"); Sets our pagination limit to 5 and loads the correct set of posts. $lastPost = $posts->last(); Saves the last post of each set. We use this later to determine whether the htmx attributes should be rendered. $nextPageUrl = $page->url . $input->pageNumStr((int) $input->pageNum() + 1); We are building the link to the next "page" with the next set of posts. Will result in something like "/posts/page2", "/posts/page3" etc. $hxAttributes = array(); $hxAttributes[] = 'hx-get="' . $nextPageUrl . '"'; $hxAttributes[] = 'hx-trigger="revealed"'; $hxAttributes[] = 'hx-swap="afterend"'; Define our htmx attributes as an array. They will be added to every last post's HTML. Note the hx-get attribute which will be the URL for the AJAX call in the background. That request is triggered whenever the last post becomes visible inside the viewport while scrolling down. hx-swap afterend tells htmx to append the next batch of posts after the last post. <?php if (!$config->ajax) : ?> <section pw-append="content" class="posts" hx-headers='{"X-Requested-With": "XMLHttpRequest"}'> <?php endif ?> // and <?php if (!$config->ajax) : ?> </section> <?php endif ?> Renders the wrapping section tag only on initial page load which is a none AJAX request. Note the hx-headers='{"X-Requested-With": "XMLHttpRequest"}'. This adds an additional header to all AJAX requests with htmx. We need this header so ProcessWire understands that it is an AJAX request. Otherwise $config->ajax would always return false. See https://htmx.org/attributes/hx-headers/ for more info <?php foreach ($posts as $post) : ?> <article class="post" <?php if ($post == $lastPost) echo implode(' ', $hxAttributes) ?>> <header> <h3><?= $post->title ?></h3> </header> </article> <?php endforeach ?> Render each posts's HTML. If it is the last post, also render our htmx attributes. For brevity in this example I only output the post title. <?php if ($config->ajax) return $this->halt() ?> For AJAX requests stop execution of the template file and everything that follows. This prevents appending of _main.php for ajax calls. So we only get the desired HTML for the list of posts and no head, footer etc. Summary Compared to other approaches, htmx lets us control all our AJAX logic with a few html attributes. Really neat and concise. Easypeasy. I like that and will surely use an approach like this in future when infinite scroll is needed. What I like in particular is how easy this is implemented with ProcessWire's powerful pagination capabilities. If you have the same page structure, the code in site/templates/posts.php is working out of the box as is. I have this running on a standard PW multilang site profile with additions/amendments mentioned above under "Prerequisites". Here's a visual of the result:

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy Holidays! The plan is to release a newyear main/master core version. I'm not currently aware of any showstopper issues specific to the current dev branch, but if you are aware of any, please report them in the GitHub issues repo (or reply to an existing issue report), as the dev branch will soon become the master branch. There's not yet a hard deadline, so whether it's end of December or the 1st week of January, we'll have a new release out shortly. The dev branch is very stable right now (likely more stable than the master branch) so it's a good time to get a new version out. I've also been holding off on several larger updates to the dev branch in anticipation of this merge to master and new release, so I've likewise been holding back on any commits that would add more to test. Once we get a new main/master release out there, the dev branch will then get InputfieldTinyMCE merged into it and there will be some JS library updates, along with other larger updates, and those that would need dev branch testing. Thanks for reading and I hope that you have a great holiday weekend and week ahead