ProcessWire Weekly #299

In the 299th issue of ProcessWire Weekly we're going to walk you through the latest updates to the core, introduce two brand new third party modules, and more. Read on!

Welcome to the latest issue of ProcessWire Weekly! This week we're going to kick things off by checking out what Ryan has to say about the latest dev branch updates — as well as some additional updates that should land in the dev branch by next week — and dig into two new third party modules: Template Tags Edit in List and Instagram Basic Display API.

Our latest site of the week, on the other hand, belongs to a craft brewery located in the state of Ohio, U.S. — Middle West Spirits. Their site, designed by Mynte Design Co. and skillfully fleshed out by Process Interactive, is in itself a true work of craftsmanship.

Thanks to all of our readers for being here with us again, and as always, any feedback is most welcome – please don't hesitate to drop us a line if there's anything in your mind you'd like to share with us. Enjoy our latest issue and have a great weekend!

January 31st, 2020 core updates

In the January 31st, 2020 core updates forum post Ryan shares some details of the dev branch updates from the past week. Some additional stuff is still being worked on, but ProcessWrie 3.0.150 should be out by next week — but, in the meantime, here's a brief summary of what's new this week:

  • There's a new core class called FieldsTableTools, accessible through the $fields API variable. This is essentially a shared, internal toolbox for database tasks for fields, such as managing tables and indexes. For the most part this'll be relevant for core and fieldtype module development.
  • Processwire now has the ability to enforce unique field values on database level. The first fieldtype to support this option is FieldtypeEmail (using the dev branch, edit an email field and you should see this option under the "Advanced" tab), but more fields — such as FieldtypeText and FieldtypeInteger — will soon support this as well.

As for the 3.0.150 updates yet to be released, there's one very interesting addition that Ryan is still working on, and hopes to release by next week: the ability to log in using email address alone. This, of course, requires that emails are unique first — hence the updates mentioned above.

Something else Ryan talks about in the forum post are planned future additions for the FieldsTableTools class, which include the ability to modify the MySQL data type used for storage: for an example, for an integer field you might be able to choose whether to use TINYINT, SMALLINT, MEDIUMINT, INT, or BIGINT. While this is a bit of a power user feature, it would also allow ProcessWire fields to cater for a whole bunch of new use cases.

For more details regarding this week's updates, be sure to check the forum post from Ryan. Hopefully we'll be able to properly introduce 3.0.150 by next week, so stay tuned for that!

New module: Template Tags Edit in List

Template Tags Edit in List is a brand new module by BitPoet. This module adds "Manage Tags" button to the Templates list in Admin, which — once clicked — brings you to a new view, in which you can quickly create, modify, or delete template tags, as well as connect/disconnect tags to/from templates by using a simple checkbox UI.

Template Tags Edit in List screencast GIF by BitPoet. The screencast showcases newly added Admin views, and covers adding a new tag and connecting it to a select group of templates.

The GUI provided by this module is essentially identical to the native one in the Fields editor; in other words this module adds for Templates a feature that already exists for Fields, so if you're already familiar with that one, you'll be right at home with this one as well.

While this module is considered an early alpha release, you can already give it a try by downloading or cloning it directly from the TemplateTagsEditList GitHub repository. Big thanks to BitPoet for sharing this module with us!

New module: Instagram Basic Display API

Instagram Basic Display API is another module in its early stages of development, but it's already functional and available for testing. This module aims to provide easy way to integrate into the official Basic Display API for Instagram, which allows users of your app to get basic profile information, photos, and videos from their Instagram accounts.

There are plans to extend this module to cover the entirety of the Basic Display API, but at the moment these are the methods it provides access to:

If you're interested in using this module to develop your own Instagram app, be sure to visit the support forum thread for the InstagramBasicDisplayApi module for additional details. You can download or clone the module files from the InstagramBasicDisplayApi GitHub repository. Thanks to Chris Thomson for sharing this project with us!

Site of the week: Middle West Spirits

Our latest site of the week belongs to the craft distillery Middle West Spirits. Based in Columbus, Ohio, Middle West Spirits is known for their award-winning whiskeys, vodkas, and gins produced from local ingredients.

The Middle West Spirits website was designed by Mynte Design Co. and developed by Process Interactive. The site is an introduction to the brewery and their products, filled to the brim with content such as employee introductions, recipes, and slideshows showcasing both the personnel and the equipment. One feature we found particularly neat is the recipe library, which — in addition to being quite extensive — boasts a great design and a handy filtering feature. The purpose-built print layout is also a nice touch.

The design of the site is modern and elegant, and when coupled with quality content, there's plenty of great stuff going on in here. Behind the scenes we noticed traces of the Bootstrap front-end framework, but overall there's just so much custom work here that it's difficult to say for sure. Same goes for actual under the hood stuff: what's happening behind the scenes stays behind the scenes, so there's not much we can say about that part – except for the fact that the end result feels fast and reliable.

Our congratulations to Middle West Spirits for their ProcessWire powered website, and of course to the team behind this website for a job well done – great work, everyone!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's all for the 299th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 8th 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!

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