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

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

The issue turned out in 3 weeks, since 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 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 a new format. 3 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, 13 problems have now been solved.

• Work continues on correcting broken links, translating documentation into Russian, and improving 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• All images and screenshots are synchronized with notes, and work has begun on updating outdated images.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 documentation for miniShop2 and Tickets.
• Liam Franklin actively connected to the work, who rewrote several important sections on installation, on the syntax of MODX tags, on assembly of templates. This is important work, as part of the documentation describes very outdated things and you need to put everything in order.
• Mark Hamstra did a full search of the documentation. So far, without the use of 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 were converted to a new format. Here you can see the results of labor .

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

News from GitHub

• # 14558 - the discussion of the removal of unnecessary full-text index proposed by Sergey Shlokov is still ongoing. I need your opinion.
• # 14488 - now MODX 3 will definitely work only on PHP 7.0+.
• # 14571 - the guys from Sterc, well-intentioned, suggested adding several useful widgets, one of which is a help widget for keyboard shortcuts that are supported in the MODX admin panel.
• # 14578 - Sander suggested slightly improving the appearance of the user profile, but Bach has already done the same ( # 14420 )! This shows that there is a need to improve communication between development participants. This is a bit of a chat in Telegram, but you need to transfer this experience to the English-speaking community.
• # 14581 - Ruslan Aleev suggested that the value of the Name field in the tables be made a reference to the entity, however there are issues that require discussion by the community.
• # 14569 - in the original design layout of the new third version there was such a widget and Sander decided to implement it in the code. However, I am not very happy with this, because as with the help widget, it would be very nice to assemble such widgets into a separate package, which could be offered as one of the starting ones. The reason is not to clutter up the already bloated system code. All this then needs to be supported, but there are not many people and time.
• # 14507 - Ivan Bochkarev completed work on the updated installer appearance for MODX 3. This PR is ready for testing and review. All old styles and images are cut, the template is made up in accordance with the previously provided design.

Interesting notes and articles

• Creating tables through MIGX - Mikhail Elektrikov described a trivial way to create his own 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 an instruction-call on how to deal with this. Mikhail Electricov translated the original post by Rain .
• MAB restart - on April 25, a meeting of the renewed MAB group took place, a group of people who care about MODX and who are ready to take responsibility for its development. In the note the results of the first meeting.
• Second MAB meeting - On May 2, the second, “extended” meeting took place, at which the main topic was a discussion of the MODX 3 roadmap and MODX in general. The results were interesting. Translation of notes will be later.
• Removing drafts on modx.pro - at the request of “workers” Vasily Naumkin added the ability to delete drafts to authors. A trifle that has long been lacking.
• MODX Request management - Sergey Shlokov has examined in detail the mechanism for processing an incoming request in MODX. Caution, digging in the gut of MODX in the video may injure.

New and updated add-ons

• GoogleSheets-1.3.0-pl - Aleksandr Huz updated the component for synchronizing the site with Google tables. What features were added, the author described in a note in the community . Plans to add more!
• msOneClick-1.3.0-pl - Andrey Stepanenko released a very large update of his component for placing an order in one click. The author’s note describes all this magnificence.
• Boilerplate-1.0.5-pl - Aleksandr Huz introduced its new free component, which is the initial basic version of the site, with pre-installed add-ons and settings. May save time. A detailed list of all entities and component actions is given in a note in the community .
• ReachGoal-1.0.0-beta - it has long been possible in all visitors accounting services to track goals (clicks, actions). Mikhail Tyrsyna published its component , which 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 support request 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 Ray updated his simple component that can display different chunks depending on whether the user is logged in or not. The new version fixes bugs and adds a fallback in the case when 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 features of the component are described in a note .
• Portfolio-1.0.1-pl - published component-theme for the site with a portfolio. There are 16 versions to choose from. Short demo as a note .
• siteStatistics-2.3.0-pl - Sergey Shlokov updated his component for collecting statistics on visits to site pages. Of the innovations - a tab with statistics directly on the resource page and a search for users in statistics management.
• 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 date processing, both in the interface and in import / export operations, a special snippet for CRON tasks has been added.

Thanks for attention!

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