ProcessWire Weekly #367

Weekly update from Ryan: Pro module and core updates, and plans for the next week

In his latest weekly update at the support forum Ryan mentions a fairly major update for one of his Pro modules, UserActivity, discusses some of this week's core updates, and provides a bit of insight into his plans for the next week or so.

UserActivity v4

UserActivity is a commercial module, and part of the ProDevTools package. This module keeps tabs on logged-in users, displaying the page or pages they are currently editing, warning users in case there's a chance of overlapping edits, etc.

As of the latest update this module now makes use of the JavaScript Beacon API, which helps it identify quickly and reliably when a user has finished a particular activity. The module also knows if an activity is visible to the user or if the window is minimized or inactive, and reports the number of unsaved changes that the user has made.

Core updates for this week, and what to expect next

This week there were some updates to the core, though according to Ryan those were not yet quite enough to justify a proper version bump. Here's a brief summary of this week's updates, which will likely be officially part of ProcessWire 3.0.179:

• Float and integer fields are now considered compatible with the newly added decimal field, making it possible to convert these from one type to another.
• New ConfigModule interface has been added to the core, providing support for modules that have configuration data but are not configurable via the GUI (i.e. configuration settings are always handled via the API).
• Third party modules can now add extra plugin directories for CKEditor by calling the InputfieldCKEditor::addExtraPluginsDir() method, making it much easier for them to inject extensions for the editor interface.
• Similar to its WireData counterpart, the WireArray get method now also supports pipe syntax (WireArray::get('a|b|c')), returning the first matching key.
• Fields::getTags() and Templates::getTags() have been made hookable.

As for what to expect during next week, there's at least one pull request from Bernhard Baumrock that's currently being tested and considered for inclusion in the core: LESS support for AdminThemeUikit, which would allow one to easily customize the admin theme simply by dropping in a LESS file with custom styles.

For more details about this week's updates and our future plans, be sure to check out the weekly update from Ryan at the support forum. Thanks!

New module: FieldtypeQRCode

FieldtypeQRCode is a brand new fieldtype module from Romain Cazier. By default this fieldtype converts the URL of current page to a QR code that is then rendered as an image via the QR Code Generator library from Kazuhiko Arase.

In case you want to render the QR code on the front-end of your site, this is doable via this little snippet of code:

echo $page->getInputfield("name-of-your-qr-code-field")->render();

The default text encoded into a QR code is the URL of the page, but this can be easily modified by hooking into the FieldtypeQRCode::getQRText() method:

$wire->addHookAfter("FieldtypeQRCode::getQRText", function(HookEvent $event) {
    $event->return = "Text to be encoded in the QR code";
});

Thanks to Romain Cazier for sharing this module with us — it's a splendid addition!

New module: GraphQL support for Seo Maestro

Another small but potentially very useful third party module addition for this week was authored by Markus Tiefenbacher of Blue Tomato and is called GraphQL Fieldtype Seo Maestro. Once installed, this module adds basic GraphQL support for the Seo Maestro module, which uses a custom fieldtype behind the scenes for storing data.

Note that this module is currently considered an early alpha release, and requires both Seo Maestro and ProcessGraphQL to be installed.

Thanks to Markus and the folks at Blue Tomato for this module. It's a nice addition and better yet further expands the usefulness and coverage of the ProcessGraphQL module!

Site of the week: Fast Forward Classical

Our latest site of the week is that of Fast Forward Classical, a booking agency for artists and concerts in the field of progressive classical music.

This site was designed by Jan Ploch, and probably the most striking feature of it is the truly gorgeous design that highlights the uniqueness of each individual artist using images as well as video material. The site also features profile pages introducing individual artists, a curated list of concerts, and a dedicated journal section.

One particularly interesting front-end highlight on this site is the use of Swup. This neat little JavaScript library animates page transitions and preloads content in an intelligent way, providing the site a SPA (single-page application) user experience without actually forcing it into the SPA mold. As for modules, the only one that we could spot was the Cookie Management Banner from Adrian Jones.

Big thanks to Jan Ploch for sharing this project with us, and our congratulations to the client, Fast Forward Classical, for their new website. The site is looking really sharp, and we quite enjoyed browsing it — awesome job from everyone involved in this project!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's all for the 367th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 29th of May. 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!