CakePHP 2.4.0-RC1 and 2.3.9 released

The CakePHP core team is happy to announce the immediate availability of the first release candidate for 2.4.0 and a new maintenance release for the 2.3 branch.

The CakePHP core team is happy to announce the immediate availability of the first release candidate for 2.4.0[1] and a new maintenance release for the 2.3 branch[2].

As the date for CakeFest 2013[3] comes closer, you should be thinking on buying a ticket if haven’t already. It will be a great time to learn way beyond just CakePHP, this year we feature talks about performance, the future of PHP and modern javascript frontend frameworks. The core team is making great strides for having a new stable version for CakeFest and workshops will be based off the great new features next release is including.

A short list of changes you can expect in 2.4.0-RC1 are:

• Support for query parameters on Router::parse()
• Add option to send email attachment from string in CakeEmail
• Allow variable aliasing when using _serialize for the JsonView and XmlView. It also support pretty printing when available
• Improving phone validation for USA and Canada
• New option to multiply decimal percentages in CakeNumber::toPercentage()
• Ability to provide custom strings for timeAgoInWords()
• Minutes display with FormHelper can now be rounded to the next or previous custom value
• PaginatorHelper won’t display the first page argument for the first page, to avoid duplication on search engines
• Added CakeResponse::location() to quickly send redirect status codes and location
• Ability to set multiple headers at once with CakeRespose::header()
• Improved handling of response codes to avoid sending invalid HTTP responses
• Added SSL support to MySQL PDO connections
• IMAGES_URL, CSS_URL, JS_URL are now deprecated and can be controlled with a new Configure value
• ConsoleShell was also deprecated
• Support for setting full URLs in css/js/image constants and configure values
• CakeTestCase::getMockForModel() is now smarted and can mock AppModel
• Deprecated DEFAULT_LANGUAGE constant
• Deprecated Sanitize class
• Missing directories under tmp used for logging and caching are now created automatically in debug mode

Maintenance release 2.3.9 incorporates over 20 bugfixes and some performance improvements, developers are encouraged to upgrade their apps to profit from these changes.

A huge thanks to all involved in terms of both contributions through commits, tickets, documentation edits, and those whom have otherwise contributed to the framework. Without you there would be no CakePHP. Download a packaged release [4].