PW 3.0.176 – Core updates

[ryan]

The latest version on the dev branch will actually get the version bump tomorrow, as I'm currently on a 7-day work schedule with shorter days (factors outside my control). So what I'd usually be doing Friday is happening Saturday or Sunday instead. But the updates in 3.0.176 are well enough defined to write about here, and everything is there already, it's primarily just additional testing that remains before the version bump.

Relative to 3.0.175 version 3.0.176 contains about 25 commits or so with most of the focus being resolution of minor issue reports. However, 25 commits is a lot so there are also some new things here too. First off, as requested, PW now supports multiple database read-only configuration settings rather than just one. When more than one is present, it will select one randomly. To use multiple read-only connections, simply specify a regular PHP array of 2 or more associative arrays in your /site/config.php file, like this:

$config->dbReader = [
  [ 'host' => 'mydb1.domain.com' ],
  [ 'host' => 'mydb2.domain.com' ],
  [ 'host' => 'mydb3.domain.com' ],
];

In each array item, you can specify 'host' (as above), along with any other setting (name, user, pass, port, etc.) that differs from the primary DB connection. There's another benefit to having multiple dbReader hosts as well: If the connection for one fails, it'll move on to the next, and keep moving on till it either finds a working connection or finishes the list. 

Next up, ProcessTemplate (Setup > Templates) gained a "Manage Tags" feature just like the one you have in ProcessField (Setup > Fields). So now it's a lot easier than before to define and manage tags for multiple templates as a group. In addition to this, both ProcessField and ProcessTemplate now have an actual Tags field (like the one available for files/images) rather than just a plain text input. The Template class also gained several new API functions for working with tags on templates. Templates in PW have supported tags for a long time, but now they are backed up by a much better API and admin interface to them.

In order to support the new tags inputs in ProcessTemplate and ProcessField, a Tags Inputfield module was developed, named InputfieldTextTags (the name InputfieldTags was already taken). This module is now in the core, and it uses the existing Selectize tags functionality already present in the core, but previously only used by file and image fields. 

While developing this, I found it was a nice alternative to AsmSelect for sortable multiple selection, so made it available as an additional input option for both Page and Options fields. When used in a multiple-selection context, it ends up being a multiple selection input that takes up no more space than a text input, which can be quite handy for a lot of situations, and more space friendly then AsmSelect or even PageAutocomplete. I've noticed travel websites using a similar solution for multiple selection of destinations or amenities in search forms, and perhaps this one has some front-end potential as well. Since it's just an Inputfield without a dedicated Fieldtype, it is likely to work just as well on front-end forms (like FormBuilder) as it does on admin forms. 

Longer term I imagine we'll have an optional FieldtypeTextTags module as well, which will be useful for supporting user-entered tags sharable between pages. Currently it does support user entered tags if you choose it as an input option for a regular "text" field (see bottom of Details tab in field editor), and it can optionally be combined with predefined selectable tags as well. While all of these updates are on the dev branch now, look for the version bump this weekend after I've had a little more time testing. Though if you'd like to help test, feel free to grab it now. Thanks for reading and have a great weekend! 

[Robin S]

@ryan, maybe this update needs to automatically trigger a modules refresh? Because when trying to use InputfieldTextTags (in a module config) the assets URLs were wrong:

In the line in InputfieldTextTags::renderReady()...

$url = $config->urls($this->className());

...$url was null.

Doing Modules > Refresh fixed the problem.

[Rudy]

I am having a similar issue but not exactly as what @Robin S had. https://github.com/processwire/processwire-issues/issues/1369