Revolution 2.1 Release Candidate 4: Final Testing before Public Release
As you may already know, MODX Revolution 2.1 is a huge milestone in the development and future of MODX. From Microsoft SQL Server support to caching improvements to the elimination of thousands of lines of deprecated code, Release Candidate 4 (RC-4) fixes a number of additional issues and bugs identified by community members in the previous Release Candidate.
We still need help from the community to ensure MODX Revolution is ready for its official public release. Testing, translations, documentation and updating Add-ons will all be part of this Release Candidate period which closes May 9th, 2011. We encourage you to test and use this release and welcome reports of issues to make sure that 2.1.0-pl will be a near-flawless release.
Test and Prepare
This is a Release Candidate and therefore
should not be considered safe for deployment on production servers without thorough testing in a development or test environment. We strongly encourage testing to make sure sites and custom Snippets/Plugins still work as expected prior to the production deployment.
Here are some Highlights of RC-4
- Optimization of TV queries on cached and uncached Resources
- Resolved issues with placeholders and output filtering
- Fixed failedlogincount / user blocking logic in login processor
- Fixed error logging to custom log targets defined by array
- Various other fixes and optimizations
What’s New In 2.1:
- Full Microsoft SQL Server support is new in 2.1. This is pretty cool and we’re very excited about offering developers the choice of running MODX Revolution on a full MS stack.
- Massive cache improvements mean the MODX caching system has been restructured to vastly improve caching times. It now properly implements file locking, partitioning and multiple format support. We’ve seen cache file sizes drop to nearly 30% of their prior size or more with the system, and page load time significantly decrease. The context cache is also now pre-generated before the existing cache is overwritten, ensuring your site remains available even with vast numbers of resources.
- More Secure Password storage as Revolution 2.1 introduces the use of the PBKDF2 which replaces MD5. We’ve also included structural changes to allow future features and customizations to the password settings.
- Template Variable Improvements adding Input Options to allow you to control how particular TV types treat the data in the Manager to add validations, paths or other parameters.
- New URI Editing and Freezing. You can now customize a resource’s URL independently from the Friendly URL settings and tree path (essentially overrides the alias and alias path). If you have a resource located at /blog/2010/01/really-important.html you can set it to be called /really-important.html. This also means that if you decide to move it elsewhere in the resource structure the URL remains the same.
- Removal of all deprecated MODX Evolution Code which loses several thousand lines of code, lightens the distributions and will make future development simpler.
Impact of Microsoft SQL Server Support and Removal of Deprecated Methods for Developers
2.1 will natively support Microsoft SQL Server databases. This means, however, that Extras that interact with custom xPDO models will need to have sqlsrv schema created and maps/classes generated in order to work across platforms. All xPDO and xPDOQuery methods (e.g. ->where(), ->select() etc) are inherently cross-platform. However, if MySQL-specific syntax has been introduced, methods are available to bring the vast majority of queries into cross-platform bliss. xPDO goes further and gives the developer the additional power to tweak queries per-platform. In the future we’ll be adding other database drivers such as sqlite, oracle, postgre and more.
Revolution 2.1 also marks the departure of the deprecated, legacy 0.9.x and Evo code. While these methods have been marked as deprecated since pre-2.0, it is a fact that there will be popular extras and custom code that relies on them. This will mean that site owners will need to have all Extras tested to ensure compatibility with 2.1. We would hope that Extras developers will take responsibility to make their addons compatible with Revolution 2.1. We are preparing a guide in our documentation to help developers test and update Extras and custom snippets. Many of the Extras developed by the MODX core team members have been updated including getResources and Wayfinder for Revolution.
Translations
As usual we’ve put out
a call for assistance in translating MODX Revolution lexicon entries. Of note in 2.1 there are a number of new entries relating to the new Template Variable Input Options, as well as System Settings.
Download
Revolution 2.1.0-rc4
Read the
Revolution 2.1 Documentation
Read the
Installation Guide
Upgrade Guide
Check the
Installation Requirements
As with all release candidates we need you to please
report any and all issues and bugs. Make sure you
read the documentation, post
feedback and successes in the MODX Community forums.
If you want to get involved in helping ready Revolution 2.1 for the PL (Public Launch) release, please ask in the forums.
Thanks,
The MODX Team
Changelog/Release Notes:
MODX Revolution 2.1.0-rc-4 (April 29, 2011)
====================================
- [#4543] Fix preview URLs when FURLs are turned Off
- [#4537] Trigger refreshURIs when related settings are modified
- Have modAccess*::loadAttributes() check access_*_enabled settings
- [#4502] Enable custom targets in modUser->loadAttributes()
- [#3692] Add policy checks for new_document_in_root and add_children to resource/sort processor
- [#4526] Additional fixes for output filters on placeholders
- [#4504] Ensure UserGroup ACLs are deleted along with UserGroups
- [#4507] Fix usergroup description not being set when created
- Change modResource->isDuplicateAlias() to return id of duplicate Resource
- [#4495] Add duplicate URI check to resource/publish action
- [#3857] Fix placeholder processing when output filters applied
- [#4362] Fix path issues with Static Resources and base_urls of /
- [#4074] Require list permission on Context for Resource searches
- [#4439] Do not allow invalid characters in username / password
- [#4485] Fix issue with scrolling on drag/drop Element Properties window in small resolutions
- [#4352] Fix failedlogincount / user blocking logic in login processor
- [#4373] Fix issue with htmltag TV output render and empty values
- [#4374] Fix issue with updating files in the edit file page
- [#4024] Fix issue with LocalProperty grids not rendering list type properties display values correctly
- [#4400] Trim whitespace from Namespace paths when adding/updating them
- [#4434] Fix issue with edit panel on contexts
- [#4372] Fix View button not getting URI change after Save Resource (all Resource types)
- [#4369] Ensure Save button is active after Template change on Weblink, Symlink, Static Resource
- [#4471] Set Resource alias properly on update
- [#4469] Guard against inadvertent creation of duplicate New Resources
- Add options to configure cache file writing attempts when exclusive locks fail
- [#4464] Prevent unnecessary TV queries on uncached Resources
- [#4422] Fix problems updating Boolean settings (System, Context, User)
- [#4453] Fix File Browser when paths contain "n_"
- [#4447] Fix ACL grid in Edit Context view
- [#4438] Fix error logging to custom log targets defined by array
- [#4399] Fix IE8 javascript error on Resource and Element update pages
MODX Staff