ProcessWire Weekly #327

In the 327th issue of ProcessWire Weekly we're going to check out the latest core updates, introduce a new module called Lister Selector, and check out the website of creative animation studio Volstok. Read on!

Welcome to the latest issue of ProcessWire Weekly! Hope you've had a great week so far. In this issue we're going to talk a bit about the latest core and Pro module updates, and introduce a brand new module from Robin Sallis: Lister Selector.

Our latest site of the week is that of the Belgian creative animation studio Volstok, and it's quite a treat in terms of both content and amazing design. Anyway, we'll have more to say about that in just a bit, so keep on reading.

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!

Latest core updates and some Pro module development news

In his latest weekly update at the support forum Ryan walks us through the latest core updates and mentions an upcoming release —ProcessWire 3.0.165 — which should land on the master branch sometime next week. The long story short is that 3.0.164 has been as stable as we expected, so there are mostly very minor things included with 3.0.165.

You can check the entire dev branch commit log for the past week from GitHub (it's not particularly long this time), but to summarize:

  • Some minor updates to certain core classes, plus the Inputfields JS events now include the Inputfield object itself for easier access
  • New Sanitizer methods Sanitizer::arrayVal() and Sanitizer::intArrayVal() that work largely like their non-val counterparts, except that they don't attempt to do any conversions (CSV to array etc.)
  • Minor fixes to InputfieldSelector (empty selector value handling) and Profile page (pasting passwords via the right-click context menu)

As for other news, Ryan has been busy cooking up new features for both ProCache and FormBuilder. The ProCache updates are going to focus on providing users more control over what gets/got cached (or purged from cache), and FormBuilder is going to receive a whole new submitted entry list — one that resembles Lister and supports searching entries by column, reordering columns, and exporting the resulting rows as a CSV file.

A screen capture of the upcoming FormBuilder entries view. New "Search, filter and export options" tool makes it really easy to find the entries you need, as well as choose how those entries should be displayed and/or exported.

That's it for our core updates section this week. For more details be sure to check out the weekly update from Ryan at the support forum. Thanks!

New module: Lister Selector

Lister Selector is a brand new third party module from ever so creative Robin Sallis. In a nutshell this module provides the GUI of Lister with Inputfield Selector replaced by a free-form text input for a selector string.

A screen capture of the Lister Selector module in action, showcasing some of the selector features currently not available in regular Lister (OR-groups and multi-column sorting).

In case you're wondering why exactly would one prefer this method, there are a few good reasons for that — and of course one is that often it's just easier to write out the selector string than pick options from a GUI. Another reason, and one that makes this module quite powerful, is that this way there are no limitations: multi-column sorting and advanced selector features such as OR-groups are readily available.

Lister Selector works well with ListerPro, allowing actions to be run on the found rows, and it's also possible to create bookmarks (pre-defined via module config or case-by-case ones with a tiny bit of code) for Lister Selector. Note, though, that this module is primarily meant for superusers and "power users" familiar with the selector syntax.

Big thanks to Robin for creating this module and sharing it with us. Great idea, and a very nice implementation!

Site of the week: Volstok, creative animation studio from Belgium

Our latest site of the week belongs to Volstok, a creative animation studio from Belgium. In their own words they shape versatile, offbeat, and striking visual worlds — and after a quick stroll on their ProcessWire powered website, it's easy to agree with this statement.

This beautifully designed — vividly colorful and simultaneously so very, very dark — website introduces the visitor to Volstok and their vision, some of their animation projects, and of course provides a way to get in touch with the team. Although this is quite a simple site in terms of content, it's got both striking visuals and some interesting stories, so definitely check it out yourself.

What little we know about the behind-the-scenes features of the site comes from the Volstok showcase forum thread and boils down to the fact that the site is powered by Repeater Matrix content blocks. The front-end makes use of some GreenSock libraries, but that's about all we can say about that.

Thanks to Pieterjan Maes for sharing this project with us, and our congratulations to Volstok for their ProcessWire powered website — brilliant work from everyone involved in the project!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's all for the 327th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 22nd of August. 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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