ProcessWire Weekly #495

Latest core updates and a weekly update from Ryan

This week there have been a couple of new commits for the dev branch at GitHub, both of which are minor fixes and thus probably not very interesting for most of our readers.

What is interesting, though, is a brand-new feature turned module that Ryan has been working on and intends to publish probably as soon as later this week. This particular feature extends the native page lock option in the core with much more fine-grained control over what on the page should get locked:

To lock a field in the page editor, you click its header and hold until a dialog pops up asking if you want to lock it. To unlock, you do the same thing. Once a field is locked, it remains locked (non-editable) until unlocked. Only users with page-lock permission on the page can lock or unlock fields.

— Ryan

As Ryan explains in his weekly update at the support forum, this feature was developed in part because while the native page lock option has major advantages for some use cases and helps avoid accidental edits of pages that are referred in e.g. code and thus need to stay as-is, it is also rather inflexible and somewhat cumbersome, since it locks the entire page. This new module gets rid of all the pain points, while keeping all the good parts as-is, which sounds quite awesome to be honest.

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

New module: PoetSaml2

PoetSaml2 is a new third party module created by BitPoet. This module makes it really easy to integrate SAML based login flow into ProcessWire and provides useful tools for viewing and editing key aspects for your SAML integrations or "profiles" directly in the admin, instead of having to fiddle with configuration-, metadata-, and certificate files.

Behind the scenes PoetSaml2 makes use of the php-saml library, or SAML PHP Toolkit, created by OneLogin. The module provides an admin page for stored profiles, so you can easily manage one or more SAML identity provider integrations, and has various options available for each of those, such as...

• SP and IdP configurations, which can be parsed directly from a file or a URL
• An option to auto-create self-signed certificate and private key for your service
• Redirect URL, with optional per role settings, for login sessions initiated on the identity provider side
• Creating file based backups of profiles and importing backup files via the GUI

Though the module is still an early release, updates have been rolling on a solid pace, with some of the latest additions including new hookable methods (canLogin($user), getLocalUser($nameId), getLoginRedirectFor( $profile, $user ), processSamlUserdata( $userdata, $friendlyUserdata )), the ability to enable/disable SAML login button(s) in the ProcessWire login screen, and support for updating user fields based on the data supplied by the IdP during login.

If you'd like to give this module a try, you can clone or download the module's source code from the PoetSaml2 GitHub repository. If you have questions or required support, be sure to visit the PoetSaml2 dedicated support forum thread.

Big thanks to BitPoet for creating this module and sharing it with us!

New module: RockPageBuilder

RockPageBuilder is a brand new commercial module developed by Bernhard Baumrock. With RockPageBuilder you'll get all the typical bells and whistles you might expect from a page builder, such as block based tool for editing content, drag and drop support for reordering items, and an easy to use GUI. Additionally RockPageBuilder has seamless support for front-end editing, making it very much a real WYSIWYG tool.

What's also interesting is the way RockPageBuilder integrates with other Rock tools, e.g. RockFrontend and RockMigrations. In fact since new blocks types created via the GUI in RockPageBuilder make use of migrations, they are — among other things — very easy to migrate from project to project.

There's plenty of information about RockPageBuilder in the demo video created by Bernhard:

For anyone interested, there is also a demo site that lets you edit content with the page builder, so be sure to check it out if you'd like to give this module a try.

RockPageBuilder is a commercial module and you'll need a paid license to use it in your own projects. It is currently on an early bird sale, though: for the rest of November you can get it at reduced price, ranging from €49 for a single site license to €279 (excl. VAT) for an unlimited license for the entire RockSuite family of modules.

You can find instructions on getting started with this module from baumrock.com, and there's also a separate video available, providing a walk-through that guides users through their first steps with the RockPageBuilder module.

Thanks to Bernhard for sharing this project with us, as well as putting together a set of really informative videos for it!

Site of the week: Cheltenham Rocks

Our latest site of the week is called Cheltenham Rocks. It is an online guide of activities available at Cheltenham, UK. The site is intended for families, and is part of the My Town Rocks network, consisting of over 20 ProcessWire powered websites.

Cheltenham Rocks is an online guide to things to do for families in your local area such as events, attractions, groups & classes, and parks and walks. It also features party suppliers, local shops, places to eat, and places to stay.

— The Cheltenham Rocks sites directory entry

The Cheltenham Rocks website, along with entire My Town Rocks network of sites, was created by Unbroken Ltd. This site has various ways to find interesting activities, from different category listings to a flexible search feature, and for each activity there is a page with all the necessary information: descriptions, photographs, age suggestions, and cost and venue details.

As for behind the scenes details, the front-end of this site looks mostly hand-crafted, though there are familiar third party utility libraries as well, such as Owl Carousel, Pushy off-canvas navigation, and so on. As for ProcessWire modules, the only one that we could spot here is the commercial Pro module FormBuilder.

Big thanks to the folks at Unbroken Ltd for sharing this website with us. This site looks great, and is no doubt a brilliant resource for families living or visiting Cheltenham, or any of the other towns in the My Town Rocks network!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's it for the 495th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 11th of November. 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!