CakePHP 2.1 beta Hot and fresh
Following the release of 2.1.0-alpha two weeks ago, the CakePHP core team is excited to annonce the immediate availability of 2.1.0-beta.
The CakePHP core team is proud to announce the immediate availability of CakePHP 2.1.0 beta [1]. As noted in previous release, this version is fully backwards compatible with 2.0.5, making it a breeze to update your apps to start taking advantage of the many improvements that made into this release.
In total, there were over 100 commits and 5 new features or enhancements added to this beta version, in addition to the initial 2.1 alpha release. A complete list of the changes can be viewed in the changelogs page [2]. This is a quick list of this version’s main highlights:
ThemeView is now deprecated
We realized that having to use a separate class and add more configuration to the controller class was not the ideal solution. We’ve merged all the ThemeView functionality into the View class. Easier theme support!
Improved HTTP caching
One of the major differences between 2.0 and 1.3 is the response class with which you can set response headers more easily. This change has helped a lot people who set cache headers to take advantage of reverse proxies such as Varnish. We have taken this one step further and provided several new methods in CakeResponse class to fine-tune options for HTTP caching.
RequestHandlerComponent will now stop the view rendering process if it detects the client has a cached version of the resource. This means reduced response times, and less CPU cycles per request. In order to take advantage of this you need to use the modified() or etag() methods provided in the CakeResponse class. The CakePHP book has some examples to help you understand this new feature.
Miscellaneous Changes
- Transaction commands (BEGIN, COMMIT, ROLLBACK) are now shown in database log
- Added Set::nest() and Set::get(). The former is used to created a nested array out of a plain one using an array key as reference. Set::get() is used to access any array value using dot notation.
- Added Router::defaultRouteClass() to get/set the default Route class. This makes it easy to set a global default, useful for slug routes or i18n.
- I18n::translate() now accepts a new $language param. It also now exposes methods to read .po files, useful for custom translation interfaces.`
- Authenticate objects can now receive a ‘recursive’ option to limit data returned in queries used for finding users.
We have decided to keep a single book for the whole 2.x branch. You can read changes related to the 2.1 version in the current book. We are working towards having a new api site for this new version as soon as possible. As always, thanks to the friendly CakePHP community for the patches, documentation changes and new tickets. Without you there would be no CakePHP!
- Download a packaged release [1]
- View the changelog [2]