ProcessWire Weekly #200

Latest core updates: ProcessWire 3.0.95 + introducing owner selectors

In his latest post at the processwire.com blog Ryan walks us through the latest news and updates regarding ProcessWire's core development.

Regarding that new master release ...

Last week we talked a bit about the possibility of launching a new master version this week, but the truth is that we're just not quite there yet: we've made a lot of progress, but since there are still issue reports coming in, were going to give it a bit more time.

Don't worry, though: once things feel solid enough, we'll release a new master version, and that moment is getting really close now. Perhaps as soon as next week we might have that new master version we've all been looking forward to.

Now, instead of a new stable release, we in fact have one new core feature to introduce this week. This feature has actually been in the core for a few months already, so we know that it's pretty stable: it's a selector engine addition called owner selectors.

Owner selectors in a nutshell

The concept of owner selectors is actually pretty simple, though a bit difficult to put into words. In a nutshell they add a new keyword "owner", which allows you to find pages based on field values of other pages that reference the matching page within given field. This is probably easiest to explain in code, so here's the exact code sample that Ryan used in his post:

$pages->find("template=architect, architects.owner.height>1000");

What the code sample above – intended to work with the Skyscrapers demo site – does is that it finds all "architect" pages that are referenced in a field called "architects", and where the page containing that reference – in other words the owner of a particular instance of the architects field – has a value greater than 1000 in its "height" field.

You can also chain other keywords, making some pretty interesting queries downright trivial. Here's a query that would list of architects that have designed skyscrapers in the city of Atlanta:

$pages->find("template=architect, architects.owner.parent.name=atlanta");

Owner selectors are a feature sponsored by Avoine, so once again thanks to them for pushing the boundaries of what ProcessWire can do. For more details about owner selectors and our plans regarding the next master release of ProcessWire, check out Ryan's post at the processwire.com blog. Thanks!

What are your all-time top 3 favourite ProcessWire modules?

For our 200th issue we wanted to include something a little bit special, and what we ended up with is a kind of a poll, but with a twist: instead of providing you with a list of predefined answers, we'd like you to provide your all-time top 3 favourite ProcessWire modules. The modules that you keep on using from project to project and site to site.

If you can't think of three, don't worry: just submit the ones that come to mind!

Since this isn't technically a poll you won't see the results right away, but we'll include the overall top 3 in our 201st issue next week. This is probably going to require some manual work, so we'd appreciate if you could type in your answers according to the module names used in the modules directory. Thanks! :)

Weekly forum highlights, tutorials, and other online resources

It's been a while since our last forum highlights section, but we really wanted to include this in our 200th issue. So here we go: a 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, something that bears repeating is the Star Culture post by Adrian. This is a call to action for the community, and the message here in a nutshell is that if you're using GitHub, we'd appreciate if you could star the ProcessWire repository. With just one click you can help ProcessWire become better known. That right there is a pretty good deal, if you ask me.
• Moving on to more hands-on topics, we found the I built a PW PWA in 15 minutes post quite informative. In this post psy introduces us to a tool called PWABuilder – a really easy way to dip your toes into the world of PWAs, one of the latest trends in the web development scene. Highly recommended reading.
• Now, we might do a full module introduction post for this one in the near future, but in the meantime it's good to know that the Indexer module – which has been largely dormant for years now – has just been revived. In his post titled Indexer Module Fork DaveP introduces his version of the Indexer, which now supports parsing of .doc files, works with PHP7, and so on.
• And, finally, something mainly for our German-speaking readers – and of course anyone able to cope with the slight quirks of Google Translate: a magazine called Dr.Web recently held a poll to figure out which CMS' their readers used, and while the results were mostly unsurprising, ProcessWire surprised the authors by swallowing a pretty hefty 33% piece of the "others" cake.

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: Ariston Broadcast & Telecom Solutions FZC

Our latest site of the week belongs to a company called Ariston Broadcast & Telecom Solutions FZC. Founded in 2005, Ariston BTS FZC is a broadcast and telecommunications solution provider based in Umm al-Quwain, United Arab Emirates. They are a full service house, providing consultancy, design, integration and set-up, documentation, and technical support.

The Ariston website was developed by Simple Web Solutions – a digital marketing company based in Greece. The site is responsive and has a very nice mobile first look and feel to it. Certain things remain as-is from small to large screens, the closed-by-default navigation promotes a clutter free UI, and a combination of large, high quality images and rather generous use of white space gives the site a very nice and modern look. Content-wise our favorite highlight would be the projects area, that also allows browsing past projects using an animated, vertical timeline.

The front-end of the site is based on the Bootstrap front-end framework, and the main font is Fira Sans from Google Fonts. Connections to this site go through HTTPS, and the majority of static resources get served directly from Amazon CloudFront. Other than that, there's not much we can say here: there are no visible third party modules on the site, so the rest of the implementation remains largely hidden from prying eyes – as it should, obviously.

Thanks to Simple Web Solutions for sharing this site with us, and congratulations to Ariston Broadcast & Telecom Solutions FZC for your ProcessWire powered website. We hope that it serves you well!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's it for the 200th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 17th of March. 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!