PW 3.0.260 – Core updates

[ryan]

This week I've been doing a major overhaul of the /wire/core/ directory structure aimed at improving and adding documentation. Now all core classes that will receive their own API.md documentation also have their own directory. The /wire/core/ directory kind of resembles the /wire/modules/ structure now. In addition, new API.md files have been created for the Pages, Page, PageArray, Modules and Module, all of which also improve the online API reference documentation too, which is what those links are linking to. We'll continue adding more API.md documents every week. 

Every time a new API.md file is completed, it gets sent over to the WireTests module to verify that everything documented in the API.md works exactly as stated. So new tests have been committed to that module as well, and more will be getting added every week.

 In addition, ProcessWire now has a CLI (command line interface) installer. Installing ProcessWire is as simple as typing this from the command line:

php install.php

When you do that, it'll present you with the installation options (see below). For human users, the "Standard usage" option is likely to be best, while AI agents will likely prefer the "Alternate usage" option:

Standard usage:
  php install.php --generate                          Generate ./install-config.php for you to edit
  php install.php --config install-config.php         Install from settings in ./install-config.php

Alternate usage:
  echo '{"dbName":"mydb",...}' | php install.php      Install from settings in JSON string
  php install.php --json '{"dbName":"mydb",...}'      Install using an inline JSON string

Other:
  php install.php --help                              Display all options

That last option "--help" displays a giant screen of options, so I won't repeat it here, but take a look if you are interested. 

New versions of FieldtypeTable, FieldtypeCustom, FieldtypeCombo and FieldtypeRepeaterMatrix next week. Lots more in progress here too so stay tuned! Thanks for reading and have a great weekend! 

[wbmnfktr]

1 hour ago, ryan said:

Now all core classes that will receive their own API.md documentation also have their own directory. The /wire/core/ directory kind of resembles the /wire/modules/ structure now. In addition, new API.md files have been created for the Pages, Page, PageArray, Modules and Module, all of which also improve the online API reference documentation too, which is what those links are linking to. We'll continue adding more API.md documents every week.

This will retire my whole set of ProcessWire skills... and I love it! 

I really enjoy the pace and direction you, @ryan, and ProcessWire are going now.

Let alone AgentTools in a fresh installation of ProcessWire does some magic with LLMs (from super cheap Mistral, Deepseek, to great models like Kimi 2.6, MiniMax 2.6, and to Opus 4.6/7 and Codex 5.4/5) which was NOT possible in that way 6 weeks ago.

🥰

[ryan]

@wbmnfktr Thanks! This is great to hear, this kind of feedback makes my day. 🙂

[wbmnfktr]

You won't believe how these changes make my day(s) now!

Moving away from ProcessWire to NextJS/AstroJS/HonoJs/WhateverJS just to be able to prove a concept and go live within a super short time using AI/LLMs/Agents was hard but I got things done. I was able to test things, to experiment, to explore, to fail, to succeed.

Well... now ProcessWire is back.
Back in my preferred stack of tools. 
Back on #1.

I've already moved 2 big projects back from HonoJS and NextJS to ProcessWire. The RSS Monitoring Tool and another one. 

Cloudflare Workers and Vercel were great hosts with pretty awesome free tiers, yet... at some point I scratched limits big time.

Now everything is hosted on H*stinger for a few dollars a month with full CI/CD pipeline, no limits on reads/writes to the database, just a 5GB size limit per database and some other weird limits those projects will never reach.

It's unbelievable how fast things turned around and back to a language (PHP) I actually can read and understand and a framework I kind of know how to work with.

 

[erikvanberkum]

Super happy with the energy revival of Processwire and the speed at which everything is moving. I feel like moving from a hobbyist to a PRO!

This week did my first Claude Design, which I then passed onto Claude Code, with an amazingly simple and smooth workflow. For people into Claude who haven't tried this workflow, please check it out. 

 

 

[maximus]

Six months ago when Ryan was posting once a week, I thought the project was slowing down. Really glad to see the pace pick up!

ProcessWire's architecture was always ahead of its time — there's legacy code built up in layers, sure, but the direction now is exciting and hard to keep up with 😄

[David Karich]

A quick note about the new documentation: the table layouts in the accordion sections don't work on mobile devices. They aren't scrollable. 😊

[ryan]

Thanks for all the feedback, this is great. I just wanted to say ProcessWire has always been "back", never left. It's always been a long term project and never a fad project, so periods of rapid development and periods of slow development are normal, and I'm sure that cycle will always be the case. I've always been careful about making sure the project doesn't get bloated with short term things. So to make sure the quality is high over the long term, it's good to know when to go into rapid development, and when to let things simmer slowly. There's room for both. The other factor is that sometimes I have client work deadlines that I've got to give priority to because that's what keeps me in business, and able to keep investing in ProcessWire. I mention all this just because I don't want folks to be disappointed when there are weeks without any commits, etc., because that's unavoidable. For me this has always been a lifetime project, so ProcessWire isn't leaving or coming back, it's here to stay, as has always been the case.