ProcessWire Weekly #362

Weekly update from Ryan: more module updates!

In his latest weekly update at the support forum Ryan talks about some smaller core updates that were applied this week (not quite enough to justify a version bump), as well as a couple of new updates to his non-core modules.

Core updates this week

This week's commits in the dev branch include a minor bug fix for an optional .htaccess feature, a new hookable method, and other minor updates. Here's a summary of what's new and/or changed:

• Optional .htaccess rule for skipping over image requests was updated to account for a case where the image request included a non-existing path.
• New hookable method ProcessPageEdit::deletedPage(), called right after a page has been deleted or trashed in order to redirect the user.
• ProcessPageEditImageSelect was updated to display per-field labels in case there's more than one image field available for selecting images from.

Additionally there were some minor documentation and housekeeping updates.

Updates for ProcessWire Upgrade and Fieldtype Events modules

Two of Ryan's third party non-core modules were also updated this week: ProcessWire Upgrade and Fieldtype Events. In addition to new featurse, both of these modules are now ProcessWire 3.x native, with namespaces and so on.

• ProcessWire Upgrade provides core and module upgrade notifications — and an optional ability to install those updates directly in the admin. The latest version includes numerous improvements and displays updates for listed Pro modules.
• Fieldtype Events is intended as an example and/or starting point for developing your own custom fieldtype modules. The latest version cleans up the codebase, and also makes use of various new options made possible by ProcessWire 3.

Check out the weekly update forum post from Ryan for more details, and be sure to check out the updated modules (linked above) as well. Thanks!

New module: Pageimage Source

A newly released successor for the earlier PageimageSrcset module, and one of the latest additions to our modules directory, is a project called PageimageSource. This module, built by Chris Thomson of NB Communication, aims to make implementing srcset as simple as possible in template code.

by extending Pageimage objects with some srcset specific features. Here's a brief list of features you gain access to after installing this module:

• A configurable srcset method/property for Pageimage objects.
• The ability to enable WebP for images generated by said method/property.
• The ability for Pageimage:render() method to return <picture> elements.
• And, last but not least, a very handy Textformatter that automatically replaces <img> elements with the output of Pageimage:render().

The first thing to do after installing this module is to set it up by going to Modules > Configure > PageimageSource. Here you can specify the default srcset optios, as well as decide whether to use WebP, lazy loaded images, and so on. All of the choices you make globally can be overridden on a case-by-case basis in template level code — be sure to visit the support forum thread for PageimageSource for a proper getting started guide.

Please note that this module, despite being based on an earlier project, is considered a beta version, and also requires ProcessWire >= 3.0.165 and PHP >= 7.3. Before enabling the module on a live site, make sure to test carefully.

Big thanks to Chris and others at NB Communication for sharing their work with us. This is a fantastic update for an already great module, and a very nice addition to the collective toolboxes of all ProcessWire developers out there!

New module: Debug Page Fields

Another brand new third party module for this week is called Debug Page Fields. This module, developed by Robert Weiss, is a debug helper that essentially adds two new properties to the Page object, accessible via the $page API variable:

• $page->debugFieldValues returns an object containing all the fields and their labels, fieldtypes, and values in a readable manner. $page->debugFieldValues->fieldname can be used to directly access details about a specific field.
• $page->debugFieldTypes returns an object with all the fieldtypes and their corresponding fields for current page.

This module can be used stand-alone, but (as the author explains in the README) it's mostly intended for use in combination with a debugging tool such as Tracy Debugger or Ray, providing a nice output (and potentially support for additional fieldtypes when used in combination with Tracy).

Big thanks to Robert for sharing his work with us — a very nice addition!

Site of the week: website of Dominican artist Patricia Abreu Mota

Our latest site of the week belongs to the emerging Dominican artist Patricia Abreu Mota. Her new site, developed by Michael Baron, consists of a short bio of the artist, and a showcase of her works.

What first caught our eye on this site were the works of art showcased on the home page — those are the focus of the whole site, and definitely a reason enough to check this site out. Another thing we liked is the way this site makes minimal design work: home page consists of a grid of the artworks, each of which opens in a modal window with a bigger version of the work and a brief descriptive text. Artist bio has a page of it's own, and that's really the whole site — simple and straightforward, yet also a wholesome experience.

The front-end of this site was built using the Uikit front-end framework, a very popular choice among ProcessWire users. Some of the behind-the-scenes details, outlined in the showcase forum thread, include third party modules ProCache, SEO Maestro, Profiler Pro, Lister Pro, and ProcessRedirects.

Big thanks to Michael Baron for sharing this project with us, and our congratulations and best wishes to the site owner and talented artist, Patricia Abreu Mota. As for everyone else: be sure to check her works out!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's all for the 362nd issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 24th 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!