Submission by Adam Sanchez Ayte
By Honzam
New stable and fully functional release 2.8.1 of ActionApps is out. The main
new features (since 2.6.1) are: ActionApps 2.8.1 - list of main new features and
changes
AA Input Form
- Used Xinha (http://xinha.python-hosting.com/) instead of HTMLArea (Xinha is
not new fork of HTMLArea - better maintained, ...) - New "store policy" could be
applied to uploaded files - you can use new | overwrite | backup options - see
parameter wizard for "Insert function" on Fields setting page - new possibility
to define, how the Related Selection Window listing should look - define view
for it
- added 'integer' field type so searches and sorting can be done numerically
- new Input type: Multiple Text Field - allows to enter more than one (multiple)
values into one field (just like when you select multiple values from Multiple
Selectbox). The new values are filled in popup - new edit possibility for
related items from itemedit - new possibility to open inputform to popup window
and fill item to another slice during filling in another item in the current
slice (used in Related Item Window - enable it by 'show actions' parameter of "Related
Item Window" input type) - any AA format-string could be used for displaying
selects from related slice (not only 1 field like headline........). You can
place the format-string in "slice field" parameter for the Input Type. It works
for all Input Types allowing displaying selections from a slice, like Selectbox,
Two windows, Multiple Selectboxes, Radiobuttons, Multiple checkboxes... - Two
Boxes input type (as well as some others types) now are able to display not only
name of the constant, but any other field from constant table (like value,
priority, short id, ...). You will do it by inserting const_name, const_value,
const_pri, ... keywords in "slice field" parameter (you will see the parameter
in the parameter wizard - "Field to show" could be specified in Multiple
Selectbox input type for slices - List of "related" items in inputform could be
now filtered for most input types. You can specify: - Conditions in conds[]
array - Ordering of items in sort[] array - Bins from which you want to display
items - Field to be shown (as option). This works for: Selectbox, Multiple
selectbox, Multiple checkboxes, Two boxes, Radio buttons, and Text field with
presets input types (sponsored by Philip King, thanks) - new "Form parts"
feature - you can split the inputform to two or more subforms, where you can
switch from one to another by clicking on the tab header. see alias in bottom
HTML code for field. (sponsored by GreenNet, thanks) - improved all types of
selectboxes and radio selections - if the content of variable (in the database)
is a bit broken so the value is not listed in the array, which specifies the
selectbox, then now the value is also listed in selectbox and is displayed in
red (by CSS). This behavior make us sure, that we do not loose the value if we
commit the form with such selectbox. It also gives information to user, that
something is not right in the database. Also the bug for multiple selections was
fixed (when empty value was selected, the number was written to the database.
Now empty values aren't written to the DB for text_stored fields in content
table
AA Admin Interface
- Changed ActionApps logo Thanks to Sarka Vasku - new possibility to Enable/Disable
specified spots in the site module interface - new logout functionality (logout
from admin interface) - new "Group Update" possibility, which is used for
filling one field of all (or selected) items in the slice with specified content.
Items could be selected manualy from Item Manager or by "Stored Search" feature
(just like in "Bulk e-mail" feature. New content could be constant or could be
combination of current items field. Any AA construct and aliases could be used
for there. - new manager class used for 'Item manager' and 'Related items
selection window'. New manager allows much better searching (as many conditions
as you want also with constant selection) and new possibility to save your query
for future use - added new "Stored query" (Bookmark) and "Inputform" property in
user profile - 'related items selection window' now allows to define default
filters of items (hidden filters as well as the preset ones). Now you can
restrict from which items you want allow users to select related items
AA Output
- new possibility to specify "group limit". Group limit is used for limiting
number of items from one category. If you want to list items grouped by category.......1,
but you want to see just first three items from each category, then you could
use "group limit". You can specify it as: 3category.......1- (limit to three
items from category.......1 - descending) for "order" slice.php3 parameter, or "sort"
view.php3 parameter. Another usage is: sort[0][category.......1]=d&sort[0][limit]=3
for slice.php3 (it is also good in case you want to list all categories header,
in which is at least one item - you can just set limit to 1) You can use also
new set[]=group_limit parameter usable for views - HTML generated by AA on
public pages (pagescroller, ...) is valid (& in urls are replaced by &) -
conditions (conds[]) now could contain also long (unpacked) ids for id item
field - new modificator for f_t alias function - conds - allows you to call view
with conds, just like: :conds}} - new aliase construct - added new value for
nocache slice.php3 and view.php3 url parameter - nocache=invalidate. It not only
create the page without cache, it also clear the cache for all views used in
generation of the page - AA generates as short url as possible (sometimes only
parameters "?x=17232" - see f_b, f_f) - new aliases for slice.php3: _#SESSION_ -
session id _#PAGE_NO_ - number of current page (on pagescroller) _#PAGE_LEN -
page length (number of items) - new dictionary feature You can create "dictionary"
slice, where each item will contain a word (in keywords........ field!) and url
in other field (and possibly any other fields). Then you can use this "dictionary"
slice in your own slice to add links to "dictionary words". You can do it by
alias construct:
where - dictionary_slice_id is id of "dictionary slice" - output_text is the
text, where you want to search and replace for dictionary words, - format
specifies, how to replace the keyword - conds is optional parameter, where you
can filter only subset of used keywords from "dictionary slice". The syntax is
normal conds[] array like: conds[0][category........]='myDict'&conds[1]... (simplified
as well as extended syntax) Example: :_#KEYWORD_} _#KEYWORD_
is special alias, which could not be defined in the "dictionary slice". The
reason, why we use it is, that you can use Multi value field as keyword (in
keywords........). It is good to have only one dictionary item for one word (like
APC) and then define multivalue for keyword, where you can fill "APC", "apc", "apc.org"...
It is important for English, but it is crucial for such languages as is Czech
with different kinds of words. Note: Use this feature mainly for fulltexts of
item and not in item-listing, since it is not so quick, at this moment. - New
This calls filter methods method1, method2,.. on global object $GLOBALS[filter]
after reading the file. Very nice with site module. Member function is called
like this: method1(&$fileout,&$args) - new alias function' - dview parameter (discussion
design switcher) for slice.php3 now accepts "0": dview=0 - no discussion printed
- new slice.php3 all_scr=1 url parameter - scroller show also "All" option to
show all items on one page.' slice.php3 - new _#PAGEINDX alias - index of item
within a page (it begins from 0 on each page listed by pagescroller) as opposite
to _#ITEMINDX which contains index of item within whole listing - new /misc/charset/convert.php3
script, which allows you to encode a text to another character encoding. It is
usable outside of AA. The ussage on shtml page:
--> - new log viewer and searchlog viewer for superadministrators - new
parameters for i_s (image size) alias function - html - (default) - returns
image size as HTML atributes (height='xxx' width='yyy') - width - returns width
of image in pixes - height - returns height of image in pixels - imgtype -
returns flag indicating the type of the image: 1 = GIF, 2 = JPG, 3 = PNG, 4 =
SWF, 5 = PSD, 6 = BMP, 7 = TIFF (intel byte order), 8 = TIFF (motorola byte
order), 9 = JPC, 10 = JP2, 11 = JPX, 12 = JB2, 13 = SWC, 14 = IFF, 15 = WBMP, 16
= XBM - mime - returns mimetype of the image (like 'image/gif', 'application/x-shockwave-flash',
...) - new f_t alias function parameter asis which prints the field exactly as
is in the database (regardless of HTML/Plain text settings). It is well used in
conjunction with new "Group update" feature, where we often need the field as is.
- special field "all_fields" and "all_fields_numeric" which you can use with
slice conditions (search form, ...) conds[0][all_fields]="hi" will find ANY text
field containing "hi". You can use this syntax for simplified search conditions
as well as for extended condition syntax. It is also possible to use "united
field conditions" like conds[0][headline........,abstract........]='Hi' as
equivalent to conds[0][headline........]=1&conds[0][abstract........]=1&conds[0][value]='Hi',conds[0][operator]=LIKE
Number of united field conds is unlimited and you can use it in simplified
condition syntax as well as in extended one - new aliases
which prints content of the cookie of the and
which returns or _#ALIAS___ substitution for item of or
- just like:
or
- added stringexpand_sessurl to expand - added - allowed c-OR-1-aaa-2-bbbb in
param_conds and conds[0] - f_t alias function now supports output modification:
csv / safe / javascript / urlencode / striptags (ussage:
{alias::f_t:the text - possibly with {some
aliases}:urlencode(or another modifier)})
New features
- Added new and great Multilingual Extension (MLX) - Added MLX mini view to
display list of alternative translations for an article {mlx_view:view format in
html} mini view of translations available for this article does substitutions
%lang, %itemid e.g. {mlx_view:%lang} -
mlx in URL to slice.php3 - Added MLX support for views and finetuning slice
settings interface Parameter for view.php3 -
set[vid]=mlx-(lang)-(lang1)-..-(MODE) same as for slice.php3 - improved Cross
Server Feeding - new possibility of creating exact copy of the remote slice
through AARSS (XML exchange) (only short_id is changed) - added APC RSS and RSS
test pages with debug options (see AA menu), - users from Reader slice could
became Authors/Editors/Administrators of any slice (just like any other users) -
now works for perm_LDAP only, but we can extend it to perm_sql as well - bulk
e-mail sending (to users from Reader slice)
Inner changes
- new implementation of pagecache - uses two tables - pagecache (as the old
one) and pagecache_str2find table. It should bring much quicker pagecache
invalidation, when the content must be updated. Database update
(sql_update.php3) for new table is needed. - new "Toexecute" class used for
e-mail sending - e-mails are not send in one run of the script. It is rather
send from AA cron, so the load of the server is lowered - MySQL - fixes for 4.1
(works without problems, now) - alerts sending script
(modules/alerts/alerts.php3) could be called also from real - system cron (reads
also commandline arguments, now). The benefit is, that the script then can run
as long as you want - it is not stoped be Apache after 2 minutes or whatever is
set in TimeOut. The commandline could look like: # php alert.php3
howoften=weekly or with 'nice' and allowing safe_mode (for set_time_limit) and
skiping to right directory for example: # cd
/var/www/example.org/apc-aa/modules/alerts && nice php -d safe_mode=Off
alerts.php3 howoften=weekly The command above could be used from cron. - added a
new utf-8 language file and a language def en-utf8 which can be selected in the
slice settings - new Hungarian language support (submitted by Zoltan Varady) -
new French language support (submitted by Marek Tichy) - new Croatian (Hrvatski)
language translations. Thank to Igor Hrste from Zamir.net - new
AA_USE_NON_PERSISTENT_CONNECT configuration option - use MySQL persistent
connections or not?
