ProcessWire Weekly #114

Latest core updates: new paginated Fieldtypes and Table field upgrades

In his latest post at the processwire.com blog, Ryan takes some time to introduce some upcoming additions to the 3.x and 2.8.x versions of ProcessWire. This week he has been working on a particularly interesting addition which isn't quite ready yet but will soon be: support for paginated fieldtypes!

So, what are paginated fieldtypes?

Ryan has included a very useful screencast in his blog post, but in a nutshell paginated fieldtypes behave much like paginated pages, i.e. instead of fetching all items at once, you can fetch and display them in smaller groups.

Thinking in terms of actual fields, imagine a file field with a thousand files. Something like that would become a huge bottleneck for performance – unless, of course, those files were fetched in much smaller groups.

That right there is exactly what this update is all about: vastly improved scalability for fieldtypes capable of holding a large amount of items.

Which fieldtypes will support pagination?

ProFields Table is going to be the first fieldtype that supports pagination, but others will follow soon after. In his post, Ryan mentions specifically Repeater/RepeaterMatrix and File/Image fieldtypes, but also states that "eventually we hope to cover them all".

It's also worth noting that ProFields Table is the first one to support this feature not so much because it's a ProField, but rather because that's where the need for this feature is most commonly brought up.

When can we start using paginated fieldtypes?

According to Ryan, the plan is to release a version of the Table fieldtype with pagination support sometime next week. The feature is more or less ready, but requires a bit more quality assurance and testing before we're ready to make it public.

In other words: very soon. At the very least we'll know more next week, so stay tuned for more updates related to paginated fieldtypes!

Don't forget to check out Ryan's latest blog post for a more detailed introduction to this week's updates – including aforementioned screencast which showcases a paginated Table fieldtype in action, some API usage notes, and more. Thanks.

AutoExportTemplatesAndFields aims to automate template and field migrations

AutoExportTemplatesAndFields provides an often requested feature particularly useful for those working with separate development and production environments: the ability to automatically migrate template and field changes from one environment to other.

This module makes use of the built-in field and template export features, stores export files to disk, and provides a command-line import script for importing said files back to your site. What this module doesn't provide are the tools for moving these files from one environment to another – it's up to you to handle this part.

Since the import step is based on a command-line script, it should be easy to integrate with existing build / deployment scripts, and since the import script also takes care of backups, it should be quite safe to tinker with. Please note, though, that this is the first beta release for the module; for this reason alone extra caution is recommended!

For more details about the module, check out the dedicated support forum thread. You can grab the module's code from GitHub or install it using the modules manager. The author of the module, Michael Jaros, has requested feedback for his module so don't hesitate to drop him a note if you have a chance to give this module a try.

Weekly forum highlights, tutorials, and other online resources

Here we've got a new collection of support forum highlights and other useful and/or interesting resources. As always please let us know if there's anything important we've missed so that we can include it in one of our future issues.

• First of all a quick heads-up: if you're using Ryan's excellent FieldtypeMapMarker module on your projects and worried that Google's recent Maps API changes will break your site, a workaround has already been posted to the support forum.
• The Tracy Debugger module has been updated with some really sleek new panels: Mail panel makes it possible to intercept and review outgoing emails, while Event Interceptor adds a similar feature to just about any hookable method!
• Another module that has seen quite a few updates recently is AdminOnSteroids. Just this week the module got another new feature: compact modules view. This probably reminds long-time ProcessWire users of the modules view back in the days, but then again: some users will no doubt prefer the compact approach.
• Talking about modules, Ben Byford has been working on a set of three beginner modules in preparation for an upcoming tutorial. Check out HelloUserYouSaved, RedirectPages, and HotSwapUser and leave a comment or two if you will!
• For some reason we've seen a couple of questions about setting up a document library with ProcessWire recently. In case you're also wondering how to approach this task, check out the thread above (hint: no modules required).
• Last but not least, here's the non-ProcessWire webdev tip of the week, courtesy of LostKobrakai: Barba.js makes smooth page transitions easy as pie.. and the library itself is really, really tiny. Who doesn't enjoy quick and smooth page transitions?

If you're interested in ProcessWire news, discussions, and updates, there's always something going on at the support forum. Since we're only able to include a tiny selection of all that in our weekly updates, head down to the forum for more.

Site of the week: Jumpitt Labs

Our latest pick for the site of the week, Jumpitt Labs, was an obvious choice: not only is it a really gorgeous site, but as a bonus it has so many well thought out effects baked in that it feels less like a regular website and more like an online presentation – and yes, sometimes that's actually a good thing!

Jumpitt Labs is based in Valparaíso, Chile. They provide a wide range of services – including digital strategy, web development, application development, digital marketing and content production – and have had the chance to offer those services to some pretty big national and international clients.

The ProcessWire powered site of Jumpitt Labs is responsive and feels intuitive to use. Transitions, both in terms of moving or changing elements and going from one page to another, make the whole experience feel alive. The site also features a very good example of adapting a full-screen navigation to large screen sizes.

When it comes to the technology working behind the scenes, this is one of those sites where we really can't tell much just by looking from the outside. For the time being we're just happy to say that it's running on ProcessWire and we're loving it. Congratulations to Jumpitt Labs for having such a great site!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's it for the 114th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 23rd of July. As always, ProcessWire newsletter subscribers will get our updates a few days later.

Thanks for staying with us, once again. Hope you've had a great and productive week, and don't forget to check out the ProcessWire forums for more interesting topics. Until next week, happy hacking with ProcessWire!