CakePHP 2.1 Release Candidate is out
The first, and hopefully only, release candidate for CakePHP 2.1 was released. If you have an application running on 2.0 or planning to migrate, this is the best moment to start checking this version out!
The CakePHP core team is proud to announce the immediate availability of the first CakePHP 2.1.0 Release Candidate [1]. As noted in the previous releases, this version is fully backwards compatible with 2.0.6, making it a breeze to update your apps to start taking advantage of the many improvements that made into this release. This will hopefully be the only release candidate for the branch, should any serious bugs arise we will keep offering release candidates until we reach stable.
In total, there were over 170 commits and over 4 new major features or enhancements added to this release candidate, in addition to the previous 2.1 beta 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:
Most helpers converted to utility libs
One common feature request was to be able to use methods from the Text, Time and Number helpers outside views. Valid uses for the methods exposed in those helpers are email sending in shells, data formatting before saving in models and a few other cases in controllers. We have now refactored those helpers into libraries CakeTime and CakeNumber, while all methods found in the Text helper were placed into the String class.
Importing one of those libs is as easy as App::uses(‘String’, ‘Utility’) and use it as follows String::truncate($text);
All new libraries are composed of static methods, no need to instantiate the class. Additionally, refactored helpers will still work as usual, but they now rely in the underlying libs to function. This opens up the posibility of swapping the “engine” those helpers are using to produce the same results in views.
Deep saving
saveAll and friends ( saveMany, saveAssociated, validateAssociated …) now accept a new deep option param. If you set this param to true the it will save data as deep as it can, bringing the posibility of saving any level of data nesting you like in a single transaction. For instance you can save the Author, Posts and related comments in just one call.
The aforementioned functions also accept a fieldList option to specify which of those fields should be saved or validated. This list will apply to deep associations too.
New ACL engine
In addition to the good old database ACL engine, we have added a new one based on configuration files. This engine takes a php file containing specific variables describing AROS, ACOS and permissions to grant access to resources in your application. This is a great alternative to the database solution for those who want to get a speedy permissions checking system when not requiring a database to dynamically manage permissions.
HtmlHelper::media()
The HtmlHelper gained a new media() method to generate HTML5 compatible audio and video tags with support for multiple alternate sources.
Other improvements and changes
- Updated minimum PHP version requirement to 5.2.8 due to PHP bugs #44251 and #45748
- Paginator helper now accepts an option to set the default class for the “current” page link
- Extending non-existing views will throw an exception
- Extending views using an absolute path (relative to the View folder) is now possible
- Most view files in the cake core such as home.ctp and the default layout were moved into the app folder.
- Query params are now shown in database log when using prepared statements
We’re almost ready with this version and we have a couple of surprises for the community, so stay tuned! 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]