ProcessWire Weekly #427

Latest core updates: ProcessWire 3.0.203

In this week's weekly update, posted via the ProcessWire support forum, Ryan covers ProcessWire 3.0.203, our latest dev version. For this version the focus has been on the built-in comments system, which among other things now supports a concept Ryan describes as "comments meta".

Think of this like a comments system with custom fields. That's not something that ProcessWire has supported before, but now this week it does.

— Ryan

Since this is likely to be a somewhat less common requirement for ProcessWire sites, there's very little in terms of GUI for the comments meta / custom fields support. Instead, you can use the API to set, read, or delete comment meta values:

$comment->getMeta('name');
$comment->setMeta('name', 'value');
$comment->removeMeta('name');

Or alternatively using the Comment::meta() method as a combined getter/setter:

$comment->meta('name');
$comment->meta('name', 'value');

ProcessCommentsManager (Setup > Comments) has been updated to support reading and modifying comment meta, in case you need to access it manually. As for front-end use, there's no built-in way to handle meta values; if you want to use this feature, currently you'll need to write your own front-end code.

Finally, a new option has been added in the comments field configuration (Input tab) that makes it possible to completely disable comment management in the page editor, instead linking to the editor in the comments manager.

In addition to comments updates, ProcessWire 3.0.203 also contains a new version of the bundled CKEditor RTE plugin, 4.19.0. If you'd like to read more about what's new in this release, feel free to check out CKEditor 4.19.0 release info at ckeditor.com.

That's all for our core updates section this week. For additional details and some news about possible future plans regarding our bundled RTE/WYSIWYG editor CKEditor, be sure to check out the weekly update from Ryan. Thanks!

New module: SearchEngine PDF Indexer

SearchEngine PDF Indexer is an optional, and currently experimental, add-on module for the site search utility module SearchEngine. What this module does is that it adds support for indexing the contents of PDF files.

While SearchEngine supports indexing file fields and contained Pagefile(s), it can only store the name and description of each file. This module hooks into Pagefile indexing and, in case said Pagefile looks like a valid PDF document, attempts to extract human-readable text from the file itself.

Getting started with this module is straightforward: install and configure SearchEngine, install SearchEngine PDF Indexer, and choose which PDF parser library you'd like to use. The rest should happen automatically behind the scenes.

There are a couple of gotchas, though:

• The module requires some third party dependencies, managed by Composer. If you didn't install the module itself via Composer, you'll have to run composer install once in the module directory to get those sorted out.
• Due to aforementioned dependencies this module requires at least PHP version 7.4. Additionally it requires SearchEngine version 0.33.0 or later.

Finally, it's worth mentioning that this module is currently considered a very early beta at best. It's strongly recommended that you don't install it on a production site without testing, and/or backing up your site, first. Additionally PDF indexing may in some cases fail, so be sure to keep an eye out for any errors and/or log messages from the module.

If you'd like to give this module a try, you can clone or download the module files from the SearchEngine PDF Indexer GitHub repository, or install it via Composer. See README file in the GitHub repository for more details. If you have any questions, feel free to ask at the SearchEngine PDF Indexer support forum thread.

New module: IndieAuth

IndieAuth by gRegor Morrill is a ProcessWire module that allows you to use your own domain as an IndieAuth provider. In case the term IndieAuth doesn't instantly ring a bell, here's how it's introduced on Wikipedia:

IndieAuth is an open standard decentralized authentication protocol that uses OAuth 2.0 and enables services to verify the identity of a user represented by a URL as well as to obtain an access token that can be used to access resources under the control of the user.

... and here's a video introduction by Aaron Parecki, the co-founder of IndieWebCamp and maintainer of oauth.net:

If this is starting to sound familiar at this point, it may be because we've talked about this module at least twice already, in ProcessWire Weekly issues #387 and #97. About a week ago this module was finally added to the modules directory, so we decided to revisit it once more. The main functionality hasn't changed since last iteration:

• This module allows you to authenticate to third party apps or sites that support IndieAuth by typing in your domain name, and then confirming the login at your own site's ProcessWire admin area.
• Additionally if an external app requires access to your site, you can provide your domain to it, and then on your site grant required permissions — such as create, update, or delete.

Via this module you can, among other things, browse the applications you have granted access tokens to and see details about each of these, revoke access tokens, and set the default expiration period for new access tokens. In a nutshell this module provides a full-blown IndieAuth implementation and administration interface.

For more details, be sure to visit the IndieAuth module support forum thread. If you'd like to give this module a try, you can install it via the built-in modules manager in the admin, or clone or download the module files from the IndieAuth GitHub repository.

Big thanks to gRegor Morrill for developing this module and sharing it with us. This module is quite amazing, and definitely an interesting tool to have available!

Site of the week: EAZYWAY

Our latest site of the week is called EAZYWAY, and it belongs to Fleetpool GmbH — an official SEAT dealership based in the city of Cologne, Germany.

The EAZYWAY service is used to book interim vehicles for customers at short notice if, for an example, the delivery of a new car gets delayed. The booking system and other crucial parts of the service are behind registration, but you can read a bit more about it — and see some additional screenshots — at the by schwarzdesign site.

Schwarzdesign recently redesigned this site, including the booking mechanism, and implemented it on an existing ProcessWire installation. The front-end of the site is based on the Bootstrap front-end framework, and privacy settings are managed by Klaro, but other than that there's not much we can say about the implementation.

Thanks to the folks at schwarzdesign for sharing this site with us, and congratulations to the client, Fleetpool GmbH, for their newly redesigned, ProcessWire powered portal!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's all for the 427th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 23rd of July. 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!