Apostrophe 3.46.0/3.47.0 Editor and schema field improvements, a new low code data presentation extension, and warning fixes

[BoDonkey]

Howdy from Apostrophe Central!

Those of you paying attention to our regularly scheduled releases might be saying, "Wait, wait! It's a Friday, and didn't they just have a release?". This release is coming out off-schedule for several reasons. We need to facilitate some work our engineers are doing, Node 14 hit the end-of-support date, and because next week we are having a company retreat. But being off-schedule doesn't mean that this release doesn't have some goodies. Let's dig in!

The big news with this release is that Node 14 is no longer supported for A3. Going forward we encourage the adoption of Node 18, as it has an end-of-life date that is 2 years out. We are also eliminating support for MongoDB 4.2, as it has reached its end-of-service date. You can use any current version of MongoDB with Apostrophe, but be aware that migrating to 6 will break legacy scripts that use the mongo commmand line shell.

With this release, we have a new enterprise module and a new pricing structure. The @apostrophecms-pro/data-set module allows for easy,low-code data presentation. Editors can create data-set pieces by uploading CSV files. These pieces can then be used in an extendable widget to select specific columns for display in a table or developer-provided template, like a graph.

For the devs out there creating their own custom schema or using the following option for string or slug schema fields, this release brought an improvement. You can now use following in an array or object field to get values from the parent element. Previously you could only follow fields that were in the same array or object. Let your fields get to know their parents or even grandparents! You can check out the documentation to learn more.

Our engineers also performed some code base massage so that we are no longer getting npm audit and snyk test warnings. Woot!🎉

Other updates of interest in this release are improvements to page refresh handling and better typeahead support in the manager modal. Read the changelogs below for all of the juicy details!

Moving into our next cycle, the team will meet in person to brainstorm about making Apostrophe better! Specifically, we will be looking into new ways to harness the AI revolution. If you have some ideas that you think we should consider, hit up the Productboard and give us some feedback! The next scheduled release is May 24th, but stay tuned to this space for potential updates and Philly Tech Week shenanigans!

Apostrophe 3.47.0

Changes

• Since Node 14 and MongoDB 4.2 have reached their own end-of-support dates,
  we are no longer supporting them for A3. Note that our dependency on
  jsdom 22 is incompatible with Node 14. Node 16 and Node 18 are both
  still supported. However, because Node 16 reaches its
  end-of-life date quite soon (September), testing and upgrading directly
  to Node 18 is strongly recommended.
• Updated sluggo to version 1.0.0.
• Updated jsdom to version 22.0.0 to address an installation warning about the word-wrap module.

Fixes

• Fix extendQueries to use super pattern for every function in builders and methods (and override properties that are not functions).

Apostrophe 3.46.0

Fixes

• Adding or editing a piece no longer immediately refreshes the main content area if a widget editor is open. This prevents interruption of the widget editing process
  when working with the @apostrophecms/ai-helper module, and also helps in other situations.
• Check that e.doc exists when handling content-changed event.
• Require updated uploadfs version with no dependency warnings.

Adds

• Allow sub-schema fields (array and object) to follow parent schema fields using the newly introduced following: '<parentField' syntax, where the starting < indicates the parent level. For example <parentField follows a field in the parent level, <<grandParentField follows a field in the grandparent level, etc. The change is fully backward compatible with the current syntax for following fields from the same schema level.

Changes

• Debounce search to prevent calling search on every key stroke in the manager modal.
• Various size and spacing adjustments in the expanded Add Content modal UI

Enterprise modules

@apostrophecms-pro/data-set 1.0.0

This module provides an easy avenue for low-code data presentation. It creates a data-set piece for the import of comma-separated values (CSV) files. A separate widget allows for the dynamic selection of columns, and display of the data as an HTML table, or in other templates provided by the developer. Contact us or visit our new pricing page to learn more.

Adds

• Initial release of the @apostrophecms-pro/data-set module

Utilities

launder 1.7.0

Launder can be used to sanitize strings, integers, floats, urls, and more. It's best for cases where you've already used front-end validation to encourage smart input, and now you want to make sure your inputs are reasonable.

Changes

• Modernize dependencies to correct installation warnings, and eliminate use of var.

oembetter 1.1.0

oembetter is a modern oembed client which allows you to add filters that provide or improve oembed support for services that either don't have it or don't do it very well.

Changes

• Switched to fast-xml-parser, eliminating installation warnings about xml2js.

sluggo 1.0.0

sluggo is a fast, slug generator with a small code footprint that understands Unicode.

Changes

• Accept array for "allow" option

uploadfs 1.22.1

uploadfs copies files to a web-accessible location and provides a consistent way to get the URLs that correspond to those files. uploadfs can also resize, crop and autorotate uploaded images. uploadfs includes S3-based, Azure-based, GCS-based and local filesystem-based backends and you may supply others.

fixes

• Corrected behavior of getUrl method for Azure storage, for Apostrophe compatibility. This regression was introduced an hour ago in 1.22.0.

1.22.0

Changes

• Remove azure-storage in favor of the actively supported @azure/storage-blob, refactor. No public API changes.
• Remove request package and all related dependencies in favor of the actively supported node-fetch@2, refactor tests.
• Update outdated dev dependencies.