ProcessWire Weekly #196

Latest core updates: ProcessWire 3.0.91

In his latest post at the processwire.com blog, Ryan talks about ProcessWire 3.0.91, our latest dev branch version. This version fixes various issues, but also improves the page finding capabilities of ProcessWire by adding a brand new feature – fieldtype selectors.

By fieldtype selectors we mean that, as of 3.0.91, you can now find pages on which one or more of fieldtypes – instead of just fields – matches the given selector string. This is probably easiest to explain by an example, so this selector, for an example, should now return all pages that include a Textarea field containing the string "coffee":

$pages->find("FieldtypeTextarea%=coffee");

You can also query multiple fieldtypes simultaneously by separating each fieldtype name with a pipe character – just like you would query multiple fields:

$pages->find("FieldtypeTextarea|FieldtypeText|FieldtypePageTitle%=coffee");

Additionally, as a pretty neat little shortcut, you can query any fieldtype that extends another fieldtype simply by adding the .extends suffix to the name of the fieldtype:

$pages->find("FieldtypeText.extends%=coffee");

Finally, the latest release of the core also adds support to a brand new method of finding pages using the .fields suffix:

$items = $pages->find("FieldtypeTextarea.fields");

This query makes the page finder use a different method of finding the pages, and the resulting PageArray $items includes a data property "fields" that contains details about how many pages were found for each of the matching fields.

For more details, instructions, and usage examples regarding aforementioned newly added selector features, please check out the latest core updates post at the processwire.com blog. Thanks!

New Module: ImagePicker Field

For this issue we have a new third party module bundle from first time module author theo. The module in question is called ImagePicker Field – or ImagePicker Input – and as the name suggests, it provides you with an image picker field.

Now, the reason we call this a module bundle is that this module is a combination of a fieldtype, an inputfield, and a Process module. Once you create a field using the fieldtype and inputfield provided, you get to choose an image from another page on your site using really handy image picker – or you can use it to store a reference to an external image.

When requested via API, the field returns an URL – although the module does provide a separate method for getting the Pageimage object as well. You can configure the pages from which images can be selected by defining a per-field selector string, and overall this field works really well together with all sorts of media library setups.

For more details about this module, check out the ImagePicker Field support forum thread and the ImagePickerField GitHub repository. Huge thanks to theo for sharing your work with us – this module is a really awesome contribution!

Site of the week: HK SHOP+EXPO GmbH

Our latest site of the week belongs to HK SHOP+EXPO GmbH, an interior design, joinery, and residential fittings company offering their services for architects, planners, building designers, and private clients alike. HK SHOP+EXPO is a family business, founded back as 1998 and based in the town of Limbach-Oberfrohna, Germany.

This week we had some strong candidates for the site of the week title, but ended up with this site mainly because it performs particularly well, looks good, and has a very enjoyable user experience. Other things going for this site are it's multi-language implementation and various smaller details sprinkled throughout the site: customized contact form, a number of unobtrusive animations and parallel effects, and of course the really neat looking full screen "works" carousel.

The visible part of this site is based on the Uikit front-end framework, and the carousels on the site make use of the Owl Carousel jQuery plugin. The ProcessWire modules visible on the public-facing part of the site are Email Obfuscation – EMO for short – from Roope, and Map Marker from Ryan.

Thanks to Maximilian Ehrhardt for sharing this site with us, and congratulations to HK SHOP+EXPO GmbH for having a really slick ProcessWire powered website!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's it for the 196th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 17th of February. 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!