ProcessWire Weekly #319

Latest core updates: ProcessWire 3.0.160

As we briefly mentioned last week, ProcessWire 3.0.160 was planned for this week, and along it some new selector operators. The thing is, though, that we spoke of a couple of new operators — yet, by my count, there are quite a few more there!

List of new operators available as of ProcessWire 3.0.160

Here's a list of new operators available as of 3.0.160, along with brief explanation of what each operator does and how it differs from other similar operators.

• Contains words partial (~*=)
  Like existing match words (~=) operator, except that this one matches partial words as well.

• Contains words live (~~=)
  Like match words, except that the last word in the query is treated as a partial match.

• Contains words like (~%=)
  Matches all words in the query, in full or in part.

• Contains words and expand (~+=)
  Like match words operator, but with the added power of the query expansion feature supported by MySQL fulltext indexes.

• Contains any words (~|=)
  One or more of the words must match; this is similar to splitting the query with pipe (|) characters, but often easier to use, and better optimized.

• Contains any partial words (~|*=)
  Similar to the previous operator, except that this one also provides partial matches.

• Contains any words like (~|%=)
  Similar to the previous two operators, but uses LIKE query behind the scenes instead of the fulltext index.

• Contains phrase and expand (*+=)
  Variation of the phrase match operator (*=) with added query expansion support.

• Contains match (**=)
  This operator works much like the MATCH/AGAINST feature of MySQL fulltext indexes.

• Contains match and expand (**+=)
  Otherwise identical to previous operator, except for the added query expansion.

• Advanced text search (#=)
  This operator adds support for special characters, such as "+" for "must match", "-" for "must not match", and "*" for specifying partial matches.

These new operators add loads of power to text-based searches in ProcessWire. The query expansion feature alone is nothing short of amazing as it can "magically" include related results in the mix, while the "advanced text search" feature is something you'll often see in databases with specific needs and somewhat technically oriented users.

You can find more details on each new operator from the weekly blog post by Ryan. The post also includes a handy search feature you can use to test out each operator and compare the results. Definitely check it out!

New module: SplashAndGrab

The first new third party module for this issue is something called SplashAndGrab. Developed by Mats Neander, this module adds a search input to specified image inputfields, allowing you to easily find and pull in images from the free stock photo service Unsplash.

In addition to regular text search, SplashAndGrab provides the ability to specify the orientation and colors of the found images, as well as sort them by relevance or upload date. You can also pick more than one image at once.

This module is still considered beta, so typical warnings apply; test carefully before putting it into production use and so on. Big thanks to Mats for developing this module and sharing it with the community — looks amazing!

New module: RockFinder3

Next up we have a new iteration of the immensely powerful RockFinder module. This is the third major release of the module, and has the most native-like API so far: chaining support, multi-language support, and more.

For those of you not familiar with the RockFinder modules, the long story short is that they are a kind of a mix between ProcessWire's native selector queries and efficient — yet often somewhat complicated — SQL queries. RockFinder makes it easy to find and handle very large quantities of data, augment regular queries with raw SQL, and pick and choose exactly those pieces of data that make sense for your use case:

Typical use cases for RockFinder include all sorts of reports and exports where speed is of essence, and raw SQL may be needed as well. Since the data is returned as an array of plain PHP objects, memory consumption is almost a non-issue, and you can handle massive amounts of data in a breeze, without choking your entire host in the process.

RockFinder3 docs are extensive and easy to grasp, so definitely go check them out for more details. Big thanks to Bernhard for his dedication to this module; thank you, and keep up the great work!

Site of the week: Studio Pixelgold

Our latest site of the week belongs to Studio Pixelgold. Located in Wuppertal, Germany and founded in 2002 as a "one man show", Pixelgold now has 9 employees is a full-service agency that provides advertising and photography services specifically for the watch and jewellery industry. Their services range from the initial concept to a finished production, and include advertising campaigns, model shootings, catalogues, press work, and photography services.

The website of Studio Pixelgold was designed and developed by VOLL digital, and focuses on introducing the studio and their projects. The design of the site is clean and modern, giving plenty of room for Pixelgold's amazing photographic work. Each projct has a page of its own, and the projects area has a tag-based filtering mechanism where one can easily filter content based on multiple tags at once.

As for what makes this site tick, it looks like the front-end is largely built with a utility-first CSS framework — most likely Tailwind — and some of the third-party components used on the front-end of the site include PhotoSwipe and the Klaro consent manager. Regarding the back-end of this site, well — your guess is as good as ours.

Big thanks to the folks at VOLL digital for sharing this wonderful project with us, and our congratulations to Studio Pixelgold for their new, ProcessWire powered website. Absolutely stunning work!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's all for the 319th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 26th of June. 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!