ProcessWire Weekly #544

Latest core updates and a weekly update from Ryan

This week we've got some new feature additions for the core, available via ProcessWire dev branch at GitHub. These updates, which are covered in more detail in a new weekly post by Ryan at the support forum, are as follows:

• New $pages->saveFields($page, $fields) and $page->saveFields($fields) methods. Fields can be provided as an array, or as a comma-separated string. Both methods also accept an array of additional options, just like $pages->save().
• The Options field was updated, greatly improving the developer experience: you can now get, add, and remove items by any valid option property using named methods for operation + property.

For completeness, here's the full list of new Options field methods:

• Getting values: getByID($id), getByValue($value), and getByTitle($title)
• Adding values: addByID($id), addByValue($value), and addByTitle($title)
• Removing values: removeByID($id), removeByValue($value), and removeByTitle($title)

According to Ryan there probably won't be any core updates next week, but we should be back to our regular schedule in a few weeks. In the meantime be sure to check out the weekly update from Ryan for more details about this week's updates. Thanks!

New module: Inputfield Dependency Helper

Inputfield Dependency Helper is a new third party module created by Robin Sallis. This module is essentially a helper for building inputfield dependency rules in the admin: it adds "Insert field name" and "Insert value" dropdown menus right below show-if and required-if fields, making inserting fields and values easier — and less error-prone.

If you'd like to give this module a try, you can install it via the modules manager in the admin, or clone or download the module's source code from the Inputfield Dependency Helper GitHub repository. If you have questions, suggestions, or other comments for the author, head down to the Inputfield Dependency Helper support forum thread.

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

Weekly forum highlights, tutorials, and other online resources

For this week we've gathered a list of support forum highlights and other useful and hopefully interesting resources. As always, please let us know if there's anything important we've missed, so that we can include it in one of our future issues.

• The commercial form building tool RockForms, which was initially introduced in ProcessWire Weekly #519, has just been added to the modules directory. Bernhard has also been busy improving his module, adding file uploads, multistep forms, logger for form submissions, and more. Visit RockForms docs for more details!
• Another topic loosely related to Bernhard's modules is the splendid collection of block button icons shared by FireWire. They were made for RockPageBuilder, but will also work great with e.g. Repeater Matrix as well. Hat tip to FireWire!
• Next up we've got a case story and tutorial post from gebeer, walking us through the process of creating PDF files automatically. Though the post was submitted into the showcase forum area, it's easily detailed enough to work as a proper tutorial, so definitely check it out.
• Talking about tutorials, Bernhard recently posted one of these as well, covering one solution for updating the database schema for existing fieldtype modules. This approach is the same that Ryan has used in the core Comments fieldtype, and a similar approach can be applied to other module types as well.
• Last but not least, here's another forum post that might be of interest especially for module authors: FireWire covering the structure of his very popular Fluency translation module, explaining how he ended up with it, and what he might do differently now. That's a whole lot of solid information right there!

As a loosely related note, recent events related to WordPress have made some users consider other options — and, as Jonathan Lahijani pointed out in the ProcessWire on the web thread at the support forum, ProcessWire is among those options. Hopefully things get settled without too much damage, especially to open source software in general, but of course we also welcome anyone who sees this as a good time to let ProcessWire prove that there are indeed great alternatives.

If you're interested in ProcessWire news, discussions, and updates, there's always something going on at the support forum. Since we're only able to include a tiny selection of all that in our weekly updates, head down to the forum for more.

Site of the week: Best Break

Our latest site of the week is a blog and recipe website called Best Break. It is not a brand-new release, as Best Break has been featured in our sites directory for quite a while already — in fact it is one of the most liked sites in its category.

Best Break is both a blog and a recipe site with quite respectable amount of content available: there are hundreds of recipes with easy to follow instructions and ingredient lists, and close to a hundred articles as well. Recipes are filterable by various criteria, such as category (breakfast, snacks), difficulty, preparation time, and dietary considerations (vegan, vegetarian, fish, and meat).

The language of the site is German, but Google Translate did a great job at translating the content to English for us, so don't let that get to you if you're looking for recipes or interesting breakfast, snacks, or lifestyle content.

This site was created, and is managed by, Markenpartner GmbH. The front-end is based on the Uikit front-end framework, with various custom additions, such as a very handy ingredient amount calculator. There are no familiar ProcessWire modules visible on the site, so not much else we can say about the technical implementation.

Big thanks to Markenpartner GmbH for sharing this project with us, fantastic work!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's it for the 544th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 19th of October. 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!