Apostrophe 3.8.0: Do more with Pieces!

[agilbert]

Hi everyone,

Today we are very excited to share our latest Apostrophe release with you. There are few nice features included in this one, so I'll break them down below. Please check it out!

Batch operations

First off, Apostrophe 3.8.0 now includes support for batch operations on pieces. With this new feature, you can now select many documents at once to perform batch operations on. Included with this release is a simple batch archive/restore function, but A3 makes it easier than ever to configure your own operations and insert them into the manager menus of your pieces.

batch.mov

We've tried to make it super easy for developers to set up their own custom batch operations, so please check out the documentation and let us know how it goes in Discord.

Import / export

In addition to the new core support for batch operations, we are also sharing today our beta releases for the new importer and exporter modules.

These were oft-used extensions from Apostrophe 2 that have received some improvements as they made their way into A3. With the export extension, for example, we were able to hook this right into our new batch operations API so you can select a sub-set of your documents for exporting.

Alternatively, with the import extension enabled, it's now just a few clicks to create a collection of documents from a CSV file.

Importing and exporting can both be installed and configured to work on specific modules in your project. You can learn more about installing and setting these up at the importer readme and the exporter readme.

We're looking forward to your feedback on these new features for Apostrophe. Please find us in Discord or open a ticket right here in GitHub if you have any issues or recommendations to share, and don't forget to check out our product roadmap to see what else is in the works.

Thanks, and as always, read on for the full release notes below 🕺

Apostrophe 3.8.0

Adds

• Checkboxes for pieces are back, a main checkbox allows to select all page items. When all pieces on a page are checked, a banner where the user can select all pieces appears. A launder for mongo projections has been added.
• Registered batchOperations on a piece-type will now become buttons in the manager batch operations "more menu" (styled as a kebab icon). Batch operations should include a label, messages object, and modalOptions for the confirmation modal.
• batchOperations can be grouped into a single button with a menu using the group cascade subproperty.
• batchOperations can be conditional with an if conditional object. This allows developers to pass a single value or an array of values.
• Piece types can have utilityOperations configured as a top-level cascade property. These operations are made available in the piece manager as new buttons.
• Notifications may now include an event property, which the AposNotification component will emit on mount. The event property should be set to an object with name (the event name) and optionally data (data included with the event emission).
• Adds support for using the attachments query builder in REST API calls via the query string.
• Adds contextual menu for pieces, any module extending the piece-type one can add actions in this contextual menu.
• When clicking on a batch operation, it opens a confirmation modal using modal options from the batch operation, it also works for operations in grouped ones. operations name property has been renamed in action to work with AposContextMenu component.
• Beginning with this release, a module-specific static asset in your project such as modules/mymodulename/public/images/bg.png can always be referenced in your .scss and .css files as /modules/mymodulename/images/bg.png, even if assets are actually being deployed to S3, CDNs, etc. Note that public and ui/public module subdirectories have separate functions. See the documentation for more information.
• Adds AposFile.vue component to abstract file dropzone UI, uses it in AposInputAttachment, and uses it in the confirmation modal for pieces import.
• Optionally add dimensionAttrs option to image widget, which sets width & height attributes to optimize for Cumulative Layout Shift. Thank you to Qiao Lin for the contribution.

Fixes

• The apos.util.attachmentUrl method now works correctly. To facilitate that, apos.uploadsUrl is now populated browser-side at all times as the frontend logic originally expected. For backwards compatibility apos.attachment.uploadsUrl is still populated when logged in.
• Widget players are now prevented from being played twice by the implementing vue component.

Changes

• Removes Apostrophe 2 documentation and UI configuration from the @apostrophecms/job module. These options were not yet in use for A3.
• Renames methods and removes unsupported routes in the @apostrophecms/job module that were not yet in use. This was not done lightly, but specifically because of the minimal likelihood that they were in use in project code given the lack of UI support.
  • The deprecated cancel route was removed and will likely be replaced at a later date.
  • run was renamed runBatch as its purpose is specifically to run processes on a "batch selected" array of pieces or pages.
  • runNonBatch was renamed to run as it is the more generic job-running method. It is likely that runBatch will eventually be refactored to use this method.
  • The good and bad methods are renamed success and failure, respectively. The expected methods used in the run method were similarly renamed. They still increment job document properties called good and bad.
• Comments out the unused batchSimpleRoute methods in the page and piece-type modules to avoid usage before they are fully implemented.
• Optionally add dimensionAttrs option to image widget, which sets width & height attributes to optimize for Cumulative Layout Shift.
• Temporarily removes npm audit from our automated tests because of a sub-dependency of uploadfs that doesn't actually cause a security vulnerability for apostrophe.

Apostrophe 3.x extensions

open-graph 1.2.0

• Adds Slovak (sk) locale strings for static text. Thanks to @Miselrkba for the contribution.

piece-type-exporter 1.0.0-beta

• Initial release. Adds exporter features to pieces in Apostrophe 3 projects when configured.

piece-type-importer 1.0.0-beta

• Setup module, adds pieces import feature for CSV files, based on the piece-type-exporter module. It uses the A3 job system.

Apostrophe 2.x extensions

apostrophe-workflow 2.39.6

• Proper localization of the workflow menu. Thanks to Bohemica Studio.