PW 3.0.166 – Core updates

[ryan]

This week ProcessWire version 3.0.166 is released on the dev branch. In this post we’ll cover all that’s new relative to the previous version, 3.0.165. Plus we’ll check out the latest new versions of ProCache and FormBuilder—

https://processwire.com/blog/posts/pw-3.0.166/

[netcarver]

@ryan looks like a nice set of improvements, thank you.

With regard to the new location() method, I can understand the move away from the second parameter in the existing redirect() call as it is a little confusing.  Although this isn't in the spirit of the move to simplify, if I wanted to do a 303 redirect would I have to manually set the location header using sendHeader() and then return a 303 via sendStatusHeader()?  I wonder if the existing redirect() call be changed to accept either the existing bool or an int for the second parameter? In the case of an int, maybe one of the 300 (301/302/303/307/308) codes could explicitly be passed and used as the return code. That would certainly make its use more explicit and more intuitive than the existing none/true/false as the second parameter.

Regardless, excellent work as usual.

[ryan]

@netcarver You'll be glad to know that's exactly what changed with the redirect method in 3.0.166— The optional 2nd argument is now an http status code, enabling you to send any redirect status that you want, so long as it's somewhere in between 300 and 399. So if you wanted to send a 303 "see other" redirect, then you would do it like this:

$session->redirect('http://domain.com/path', 303); 

The method of course also still accepts true or false to mean 301 and 302, and the default is still 301. The new location() method sends only a "Location: url" header without an http status code, which browsers interpret as a temporary redirect.

[netcarver]

@ryan Now I'm worried that you have some kind of psychic x-men power or something! 

Seriously though, that's great news and shows I should actually read the code for the new version of the function before I type up a reply here.

[LostKobrakai]

4 hours ago, ryan said:

The new location() method sends only a "Location: url" header without an http status code, which browsers interpret as a temporary redirect.

The spec for http 1.1 (rfc 7231) only specifies the behaviour of the location header for http 201 and 3xx. I'm not sure it's a good idea to depend on undocumented behaviour of not setting a proper 3xx status code. Especially as this seems to happen even when explicitly calling:

$session->redirect($url, 302);

This not setting a http status code is waiting to cause people trouble. One isn't always dealing with browsers, which are usually quite forgiving.