MODX Digest # 5 (April 22 - May 13, 2019)

A fresh selection of news about MODX for the last 3 weeks. In the release: the resumption of MAB meetings, all processors are transferred to a new format, active work on refactoring and documentation, updating add-ons and interesting notes.

The release turned out to be 3 weeks, as there were holidays and long weekends, which I spent with pleasure in the family circle, so do not blame me for a short delay. Moreover, the issue turned out to be saturated.

Enjoy reading!

Thanks a lot to Mark Hamstra for supporting me and my work ( Patreon ).

And also thanks to all those who support transferring money to the Yandex wallet . Write your names in the comments to the translation so that I can thank you personally.

News and Events

Organization MAB (MODX Advisory Board) has earned again and in the new format. Three meetings have already been held, there are no more strict rules and stupid restrictions, and the group’s work is aimed at achieving actual results, while maintaining absolute openness and transparency.

MODX Development

Documentation

According to the documentation for now solved 13 problems.

• Work continues to correct broken links, to translate documentation into Russian, to improve the appearance of the site itself. Soon it will be possible to switch the documentation language through the interface.
• All images and screenshots are synchronized with notes, and work has begun on updating outdated images.
• Ivan Bochkarev transferred the documentation for pdoTools in English, and also plans to transfer the documentation for miniShop2 and Tickets.
• Liam Franklin was actively involved in the work, who rewrote several important sections on installation, using the MODX tag syntax, and template building. This is an important work, as part of the documentation describes very outdated things and you need to put everything in order.
• Mark Hamstra did a thorough search through the documentation. So far, without using special services or applications that will help improve the relevance of the results, but you can already use it.

Refactoring

Work on refactoring continues, and thanks to the efforts of Joshua, Jason and myself, all processors have been converted to the new format. Here you can see the results of labor .

Jason then deleted the old models and now work is being done to make the new code work. To do this, you need to rewrite some points with the connection of the classes in the old style, update the model for MSSQL and probably add support for Postgres (in xPDO 3.0 it already exists). There is still a lot of work, but there is progress.

News from GitHub

• # 14558 - the discussion of the removal of the unnecessary full-text index proposed by Sergey Shlokov is still ongoing. Need your opinion.
• # 14488 - now exactly MODX 3 will work only on PHP 7.0+.
• # 14571 - the guys from Sterc with good intentions offered to add some useful widgets, one of which is the help widget for the key combinations that are supported in the MODX admin area.
• # 14578 - Sander proposed to slightly improve the appearance of the user profile, but Bach did the same thing ( # 14420 )! This shows that communication needs to be improved between the participants in the development. It turns out a little in the chat in Telegram, but you need to transfer this experience to the English-speaking community.
• # 14581 - Ruslan Aleev suggested making the Name field in tables a reference to an entity, however there are issues that need discussion from the community.
• # 14569 - in the original design layout of the third version there was such a widget and Sander decided to implement it in the code. However, I am not very happy about this, because, as with the help widget, such widgets would be very good to put together in a separate package, which could be offered as one of the starting ones. The reason is not to litter and so bloated system code. This is all you need to maintain then, but there is not much time and people.
• # 14507 - Ivan Bochkarev completed work on the updated appearance of the installer for MODX 3. This PR is ready for testing and review. All the old styles and images were cut out, the template was laid out in accordance with the design provided earlier.

Interesting notes and articles

• Creating tables through MIGX - Michael Electricov described a trivial way to create his table in MODX using the MIGX component. This method is even faster than dealing with modExtra.
• MODX setup / Directory Site Exploit - a couple of weeks ago there was a new wave of attempts to hack sites through the left setup folder and the MODX team wrote a call for how to deal with it. Mikhail Elektrikov made a translation of the original post by Raina .
• Restarting MAB - On April 25, a meeting of the updated MAB group took place, a group of people who are not indifferent to MODX and who are ready to take responsibility for its development. In the note the results of the first meeting.
• The second MAB meeting - On May 2, the second, “extended” meeting was held, at which the main topic was a discussion of the MODX 3 and MODX roadmap as a whole. The results were interesting. Translation of notes will be later.
• Removing drafts on modx.pro - on requests from “workers” Vasily Naumkin added the ability to delete drafts to authors. A trifle that has long been missing.
• MODX. Request Management - Sergey Shlokov gave a detailed analysis of the incoming request processing mechanism in MODX. Carefully, in the video, digging in the MODX guts can hurt.

New and updated add-ons

• GoogleSheets-1.3.0-pl - Aleksandr Huz updated the component to synchronize the site with Google tables. What features have been added, the author described in a note in the community . Plans to add more!
• msOneClick-1.3.0-pl - Andrei Stepanenko has released a very large update of his component for ordering in one click. The author’s note describes all this magnificence.
• Boilerplate-1.0.5-pl - Aleksandr Huz introduced his new free component, which is the initial basic version of the site, with pre-installed add-ons and settings. Can save time. A detailed list of all the entities and actions of the component is given in a note in the community .
• ReachGoal-1.0.0-beta - in all visitor accounting services, it has long been possible to track goals (clicks, actions). Mikhail Tyrsyna has published a component that allows you to create such goals directly from the MODX admin panel.
• ClientSupport-1.1.0 - The Sterc team has updated its component, which allows you to send a request for support directly from the admin panel. The new version adds the ability to customize the icon for the button, as well as improved compatibility with MODX 3.
• Personalize-3.7.2 - Bob Rey has updated his simple component, which can display different chunks depending on whether the user is logged in or not. In the new version, bugs were fixed and a folback was added in case there is no full username. In this case, the username field is used.
• SocialNetworks-1.0.2-pl - again, Aleksandr Huz. This time he published his component for managing links to social networks through the MODX admin panel. The capabilities of the component are described in the note .
• Portfolio-1.0.1-pl - a theme component has been published for a site with a portfolio. Includes 16 versions to choose from. A short demo in the form of a note .
• siteStatistics-2.3.0-pl - Sergey Shlokov has updated his component to collect statistics on website visits. From innovations - a tab with statistics directly on the resource page and search by users in the management of statistics.
• FormDataManager-1.3.9 - updated component for managing data that was obtained by filling out forms on the site. Many improvements in the code, refactoring of processors, improved handling of dates, both in the interface and in import / export operations, a special snippet for CRON tasks has been added.

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