Release 0.10.0

Welcome Zotonic 0.10.0, released on April 18, 2014. These notes list the most important changes for this new feature release.

New core features

The minimum required Erlang version is now release R15B03. Zotonic is always supporting up to major 2 versions behind the current stable Erlang release.

We now use the de-factor Erlang package manager rebar for the management of the subprojects.

Websocket / comet (re)connection handling have been greatly improved. A state machine now manages the process on the server and keeps the connection running also in the long run.

The Google Summer of Code-sponsored student Mawuli Adzaku provided excellent work on the Zotonic CLI for management (search, installation, ...) of external Zotonic modules such as those from http://modules.zotonic.com/

The media handling subsystem was heavily modified in this release. It is now much easier to add custom hooks to do custom media processing when a media file has been uploaded. The following notifications were added as extension points:

• #media_identify_extension{} to make custom mappings from a mime-type to an extension
• #media_identify_file{} to override media file identification
• #media_update_done{} when the media metadata has been stored in the database

For SEO purposes, a new table rsc_page_path_log was added, that tracks old page_path names from resources so that old urls keep working when the page path changes. Old URLs will be redirected to the new location instead.

Handling legacy username/password authentication can now be done by leveraging the new #identity_password_match{} notification.

New and updated modules

mod_seo

The two modules mod_seo and mod_seo_google have been merged into a single module. Support for Bing webmaster verification has been added.

mod_artwork

This module now ships with the font-awesome icon set.

mod_admin

A much requested feature to set the “center of gravity” for images has been added in the admin. The ‘crop’ filter takes this center into account.

mod_admin_frontend

This new module will provide admin-alike editing of resources, menu-trees and collections for non-admin users in the frontend of the website, by the re-use of admin templates in the frontend site. This module was backported to the 0.9 series.

mod_admin_stats

The admin stats module adds a new admin page presenting a live view of system statistics for things like number of requests, request processing times, database and cache queries etc.

mod_custom_redirect

This module provides hooks to redirect unknown request paths or hosts to other locations. It adds a page to the admin to define and maintian these redirects. This module was backported to the 0.9 series.

mod_video

A new module for video conversion and playback. It uses theffmpeg tool to convert uploaded movies to h264 and generate a poster image. Included are default templates for movie playback.

mod_mqtt

Interfaces to MQTT publish/subscribe topics. Adds publish/subscribe between the browser, server and modules. Includes access control and topic mapping for external MQTT applications.

Template system improvements

The template include system was made more powerful by adding options to force the runtime include of a template and to make the include optional (e.g. not crashing when a template is not found).

The option was added (to mod_development) to generate HTML comments with the paths to the included files embedded for easy debugging.

Besides this, the erlydtl_runtime can now directly lookup values in mochiweb JSON structures, making template syntax more straighforward.

New template filters

trim

Removes whitespace at the start and end of a string.

pickle

Pickle an Erlang value so that it can be safely submitted with a form.

tokens

Returns a list of tokens from input string, separated by the characters in the filter argument.

filter

Filters a list on the value of a property.

sort

Sorts lists in various ways

if_undefined

Tests whether a value is undefined, returning the given argument.

menu_is_visible

Filters a list of menu items on visibility.

menu_rsc

Get a “flat” of menu parents

Translations

Translations were added and updated for Chinese (ZH), Russian, Turkish, Dutch, Polish, Portugese, French and German.

Contributors

The following people were involved in this release:

Alexander Stein, Andreas Stenius, Arjan Scherpenisse, Arthur Clemens, Bryan Stenson, Carlo Pires, Cillian de Róiste, Feather Andelf, furiston, Grzegorz Junka, Ilyas Gasanov, Jarimatti Valkonen, Maas-Maarten Zeeman, Marc Worrell, Mawuli Adzaku, Mgpld, Piotr Nosek, Simon Smithies and Steffen Hanikel.