MySource Matrix Developer

MySource Matrix Developer Newsletter Issue 25
Friday 27th May 2005

covers versions 3.4.2 stable, 3.5.0 development

News

Moving Attributes Between Asset Types

Moving attributes higher up an asset type tree has been fairly complicated in the past. Changes have been made to the install/upgrade system to make this process a bit easier for developers. The new system works as follows:

If a parent type defines an attribute with the same name as the assets that extend it, it will be moved to the parent asset and owner types updated in the attribute table. If attribute names are the same but types are different, the update will fail. If an attribute is removed from the parent but is also defined in the child type, the child will mark itself as the owner of the attribute. This functionality should help make code refactoring a bit easier and possibly eliminate the need for some upgrade functions

Disappearing Sub Menus Fixed

A bug has been in the MySource Matrix design system for as long as anyone can remember where sub menus in a design disappear when changes to the design are made. Nobody has been able to determine why this was happening, and even what you need to do to reliably make it happen. A few reports had even come in that the bug had been fixed at various points in the past.

After much investigation, Darren and Tom found and fixed this bug.

New Features

Search Page Dynamic Root Nodes

Added to: 3.5.0 development

Asset listings have been able to accept dynamic root nodes for a while now. Search page has now got the same functionality. This allows you so send the search page the list of asset IDs it should use as the root search nodes on the query string.

Empty Search Queries

Added to: 3.5.0 development

Previously, all search pages required at least some search data before they would produce any search results. For cases where only a small number of assets was being searched, it is often okay to display all assets (like an asset listing) and only require search terms for filtering. The search page now has an option (disabled by default) to allow it to conduct empty searches.

Ecommerce Cart Feature Improvements

Added to: 3.5.0 development

The ecommerce cart asset provides a shopping basket interface for basic ecommerce systems. Previously, there was very limited listing functionality in the cart. This has now been improved by modifying the ecommerce cart asset to use the listing engine, providing it with almost all the features of an asset listing. This includes custom formats for different product types, column layouts, position layouts and sorting.

Planned Development

Grouped Listings

To be added to : 3.5.0 development
Estimated start date: already in development
Estimated end date : 17th June 2005

The listing engine will soon have the ability to group listed assets by a common parent or metadata field. Grouping by attribute value will also be possible, but will not be developed. You will be able to construct as many levels of grouping as you require. So you could, for example, group all results by a common parent, and then group those parents by the value of a metadata field.

Session Timeouts

To be added to : 3.5.0 development
Estimated start date: already in development
Estimated end date : 17th June 2005

A new feature is being added to allow user sessions within MySource Matrix to be maintained for a customisable period of time (eg. 7 days). A user would be able to keep their session information (including login details and shopping basket contents) for a period of time without having to have their web browser open for the entire period. They could log into MySource Matrix, edit some content, come back in 3 days and still be logged in.

Upgrading

3.5.0 Development

Run step_02.php: no
Run step_03.php: yes
Run compile_locale.php: yes

Additional queries: ALTER TABLE sq_sch_idx_wgt_dflt DROP CONSTRAINT sq_sch_idx_wgt_dflt_pkey; ALTER TABLE sq_sch_idx_wgt_dflt ADD PRIMARY KEY (type_code, component);

Additional comments: No additional upgrade steps are required.

New Bugs Added To Bug Tracker

Notes:

Bug #655 (Whats new - 0 days in past/future not working) was submitted by Richard (RadioNZ) but was marked as not being a bug because the Whats New asset is not designed to perform the function Richard requires and so is working as expected.

Bug #657 (Broken links report reports all external links as invalid) was submitted by William but was marked as not being a bug because the server being used could not get through the firewall to check the external links. A new message has been added the link report to indicate that a connection could not be established rather than listing an invalid URL error.

Feature request #660 (Image height set in img tag by WYSISYG) was submitted by James but has already been added to 3.5.0.

New Feature Requests Added To Bug Tracker

Bugs Fixed In The Bug Tracker

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