Xaraya 2.0.0 Beta 4 (Jamaica) Released

The fourth beta release of Xaraya 2.0.0 (Jamaica) is now available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/xaraya/.

The past month has seen a significant increase in the level of activity in terms of commits, but also in terms of innovative ideas and experiments. A number of scenarios have been merged into the main branch that bring new flexibility to the framework. A lot of the current work is focussed on driving the development of DynamicData forward with a view to supporting DD based versions of such modules as Articles. 


The changes in Xaraya 2.0.0 Beta 4 are listed in detail below.


Changes with planned further evolution in future releases

1. Most of the blocks in the core modules have been converted to classes. The exceptions are the content blocks: html, php, text etc.
2. Jamaica now supports different layouts for its lib, code and html directories.
3. The Blocklayout tags have been moved to separate directories according to whether they are specific to the Blocklayout language, to Xaraya (e.g. the module and block tags) or to a given module. Custom tags in modules are only loaded if the corresponding module is active.
4. Changes have been made to conceptually "split" a standard Xaraya install into a front end (user accessed public area) and a back end (admin area, restricted, "standard" presentation and layout). Use of the dashboard as a separate "theme" has been deprecated.
5. The load sequence in the installer has been simplified. Core modules are now installed in 4 steps:
 a. initial install of Base and Modules modules
 b. loading of all core modules into the modules table
 c. initialization of remaining core modules
 d. activation of the core modules
6. Introduction of the PHP5 autoload function for loading classes.
7. Dependencies of the BL compiler on the Xaraya core have been further reduced.
8. Dependencies of the Xaraya core on module specific calls  have been further reduced.
9. UI handler classes have been added to DynamicData to simplify object handling.
10. Most xarQuery calls in the core modules have been converted to hardwired SQL statements. The class has been moved to lib/structures for those modules that require it.
11. Further typecasting in the core to ensure what we think is an integer actually is, and so on.
12. Hooks code in the core has been split off from lib/xaraya/modules.php into its own file
13. Object visibility has been introduced in DynamicData. Similar to OO convention dataobjects can be defined as public, protected or private.
14. Object hooks have been introduced in DynamicData as an object extension mechanism.


Completed changes with no currently planned further evolution in future releases:

1. xarSecConfirmAuthKey returns false by default if invalid, rather than throwing an exception.
2. The usermenu code in the core modules has been simplified.
3. Tags of unknown properties (those that have been disabled or do not correspond to known properties of an object) are silently ignored rather than cause a nasty blowup.
4. Standard modvars were added to allow admin and user menu links to be enabled/disabled in the menu blocks
5. The topnav admin menu is now available in all core modules.
6. Support for the HTML title attribute of a property label has been added where the text is set in the property configuration.
7. The Social Profiles property has been added to the Roles module, allowing users to manage their identities on about 100 social network sites.
8. The properties listing/modification page in DynamicData has been rewritten to allow updating without the need to open each property listed. The page also now supports point and click reordering of properties.
9. Not found and forbidden pages (404 errors and friends) are now redirected to custom message templates.
10. Improvements to the DD import function for booleans, textareas, and backward compatibility enhancements; similar improvements to the export function.
11. Replaced a number of function calls with class method calls. The former remain support for the time being.
12. Better support for tables and joins in DynamicData.
13. Improvements to the pager in DynamicData.
14. More removal of deprecated PHP constructs.
15. Numerous performance enhancements in the core and in DynamicData.
16. Removed unused code in DynamicData relating to parent objects. The concept will no longer be supported.
17. The directory structure has been simplified. All adjunct directories (tests, bin etc.)are grouped in the new developer directory. All documentation pages are grouped in the html/docs directory.
18. Numerous fixes and improvements to the code, in particular to DynamicData properties, SimpleLogger.
19, Improvements to the images and icons in the installer themes


The next beta release of Jamaica, which can be expected in about the same time frame, will incorporate:

- Further steps in the evolution of the first group above
- The probable merge of the classrename scenario, to complete the changes initiated using the autoload function.
- Consistent implementation of server and user timezones throughout Jamaica. (previously promised, still pending)
- Simplification of the modvar datasource code
- Dataproperty enhancements for outputting formatted fields and calculated fields.
- The possible merge of the tableddl scenario, which replaces  PHP database initialization code with XML files.
- Further fixes to ensure compatibility with PHP 5.3.
- Fixes and changes as per any feedback received.
- Any feature requests received will be reviewed as to their feasibility in the next or future releases, and feedback will be given.

Please direct all bugs to the new "App - Core Jamaica" product at http://bugs.xaraya.com/. 

For this reason the next couple of releases will likely continue to be betas, reflecting the changes in DD functionality we can expect