In the 308th issue of ProcessWire Weekly we're going to take a look at some upcoming core and pro module updates, check out two all-new third party modules, and more. Read on!
Welcome to the latest issue of ProcessWire Weekly, Though there's no new core release for this week, we're going to dig into the latest blog post by Ryan, in which he walks us through some of the upcoming, work-in-progress core features about to land in 3.0.154.
In other news we've got two brand new third party modules to introduce: RockPrice by Bernhard Baumrock, and Trello Wire by Moritz L'Hoest. Both of these are very neat, so be sure to check them out — and while you're at it, do check out our latest site of the week as well: the latest iteration of the site of architecture photographer Jörg Hempel.
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!
Sneak peek into some upcoming core and Pro module updates
In this week's processwire.com blog post Ryan provides us with a little sneak peek into some work-in-progress core and pro module (ProCache) updates. As usual you'll find a more detailed summary from Ryan's post, but here's a brief summary of what to expect from the upcoming ProcessWire 3.0.154 release.
Expanded file and image field properties
At the moment ProcessWire handles file information in a very straightforward manner: features such as size, dimensions, or orientation are checked run-time from the stored file. While there are certain benefits to this approach, there are also downsides — some of which include a strict requirement for direct access to the stored file on the disk and the inability to (effectively) find files matching specific criteria.
Upcoming core versions will start moving more file information into the database, which in turn will enable us to find images individually — and, in the long term, should also make it much easier to store images in external storage such as Amazon S3.
Read more about expanded file and image properties »
New PageFamily API and class
Family relation logic for pages — such as identifying what parent and child types are allowed for any given page, how many pages of a type are allowed and where, etc. — is currently split between multiple separate core features, which makes it somewhat hard to grasp, maintain, and extend. PageFamily core class is going to fix this by providing a shared helper for Page objects; much like existing PageTraversal or PageComparison.
Read more about the PageFamily class »
New ProCache version with built-in crawler
Now, as for ProCache, the next version is also going to be a pretty big deal. First of all this is going to be the first truly 3.x native version, dropping some 2.x legacy baggage. Feature-wise we're going to see some very interesting new things as well, such as a built-in crawler able to prime the cache for you, and much, much more.
New module: RockPrice
Our first new third party module for this issue is something called RockPrice, developed by Bernhard Baumrock. This module includes both an inputfield and a fieldtype one can use to store, edit, and display prices.
In case your first thought is that this sounds pretty simple — well, it's actually not: when it comes to handling money, there are technical aspects you need to be aware of (don't store prices as floats), and tax calculations can also get a little tricky. That's where this module comes in: it takes care of all that difficult stuff behind the scenes, and also provides you with an easy to use GUI for managing tax, net, and gross values:
As of version 0.0.2, the value stored in a RockPrice field is always multi-value, and you can have an individual tax setting for each specific value. Version 0.0.3 of the module also added an option to use predefined templates (stored sets of values), which is a handy timesaver if you find yourself repeating the same values over and over again:
For more details be sure to check out the RockPrice support forum thread, or give the module a try by downloading or cloning it from the RockPrice GitHub repository. Big thanks to Bernhard for sharing this module with us. Great work as always!
New module: Trello Wire
Trello Wire is a brand new third party module developed by Moritz L'Hoest. In a nutshell this module provides an easy way to integrate a ProcessWire site with Trello: you can set it to automatically create Trello cards for newly created or published ProcessWire pages, and the module also keeps the site and the board in sync by automatically updating the cards when pages connected to them are updated.
If you're struggling to figure out a use case for this module, for an example consider a project where you've got content — form submissions, projects, todo items, or perhaps tickets — stored as ProcessWire pages, but those items are also tied to a workflow that you'd prefer to track in Trello. Now, with this module you can very easily automate the creation of Trello cards, as well as make sure that the two systems are always in sync.
Pretty nifty, huh?
Though this module provides quite an extensive set of configuration options, should you need even more customized workflow, you can always use hooks to modify the way things work by default — and, if that's not quite enough either, the module also exposes an API you can use to talk directly with Trello.
All in all Trello Wire is a very neat and extremely flexible module with loads of potential for all sorts of ProcessWire-to-Trello workflows — big thanks to Moritz for building this useful tool and sharing it with us!
Site of the week: architecture photographer Jörg Hempel
Our latest site of the week belongs to architecture photographer Jörg Hempel. This site actually has a long history with ProcessWire, and Horst Nogajski — who has been involved in the project for years — recently introduced the latest major iteration at the showcase forum.
Since 1991 Jörg Hempel has been working as a freelance photographer, with an office in Aachen, and a clientele consisting of international architectural firms, companies, magazines, and advertising agencies. The site is a showcase for some of Jörgs amazing work, introduces the author himself, and contains a blog section.
The design of this very neat-looking website is the handiwork of Jörg Hempel and the Frankfurt, Germany based agency Quandel Staudt Design. A HTML version of the front-end was developed by Benedikt Seifert, and finally Horst Nogajski built the back-end and took care of wiring that and the front-end together into a fully-functional site.
The front-end of this site appears to use the Bootstrap front-end framework, and some of the back-end tools and utilities in use include ProcessWire 3.0.148, ProCache, AoS, Pia, PageimageManipulator2, and CroppableImage3. For more details, including some back-end screenshots, be sure to check out the showcase forum thread.
Big thanks to Horst for sharing this project with us, and our congratulations to Jörg Hempel for the latest version of this site; spectacular work from everyone involved!
Stay tuned for our next issue
That's all for the 308th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 11th of April. 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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