Upgrading to the Beta

You can use composer to upgrade to the beta version of CakePHP 3.3.0:

php composer.phar require "cakephp/cakephp:3.3.0-beta"

Behavior Changes

In minor releases, we release changes that are API compatible, but represent minor variances in behavior that may effect your application:

• The default JSON encode format for Date and DateTime instances is now ISO-8601. This means that the timezone value contains a :. For example 2015-11-06T00:00:00+03:00
• Controller::referer() now consistently omits the application base path when generating application local URLs. Previously string URLs would have the base path prepended to them, while array URLs would not.

Multiple Pagination Support Added

You can now paginate multiple queries in a single controller action/view template. By using the scope option you can use scoped query string parameters in pagination:

// In a controller action
$articles = $this->paginate($this->Articles, ['scope' => 'article']);
$tags = $this->paginate($this->Tags, ['scope' => 'tag']);
$this->set(compact('articles', 'tags'));

In your views, you can define the model being paginated to use scoped query string parameters:

// Create links for the paginated articles.
$this->Paginator->options(['defaultModel' => 'Articles']);

// Create links for the paginated tags.
$this->Paginator->options(['defaultModel' => 'Tags']);

PSR7 Middleware Added

In tandem with the deprecation of Dispatcher Filters, support for PSR7 middleware has been added. Middleware is major piece of the new HTTP stack, and is an opt-in component of CakePHP 3.3.0. By using the new HTTP stack, you can take advantage of features like:

• Using middleware from plugins, and libraries outside of CakePHP.
• Leverage the same response object methods in both the responses you get from Http\Client and the responses your application generates.
• Be able to augment the response objects emitted by error handling and asset delivery.

See the middleware documentation for more information on how to use the new HTTP stack.

Http Client is now PSR7 Compatible

Cake\Network\Http\Client has been moved to Cake\Http\Client. Its request and response objects now implement the PSR7 interfaces.

ORM Improvements

• Additional support has been added for mapping complex data types. This makes it easier to work with geo-spatial types, and data that cannot be represented by strings in SQL queries.
• A new JsonType was added. This new type lets you use the native JSON types available in MySQL and Postgres. In other database providers the json type will map to TEXT columns.
• Association::unique() was added. This method proxies the target table’s unique() method, but ensures that association conditions are applied.
• isUnique rules now apply association conditions.
• When entities are converted into JSON, the associated objects are no longer converted to an array first using toArray(). Instead, the jsonSerialize() method will be invoked on all associated entities. This gives you more flexibility and control on which properties are exposed in JSON representations of your entities.
• Table::newEntity() and Table::patchEntity() will now raise an exception when an unknown association is in the ‘associated’ key.
• RulesChecker::validCount() was added. This new method allows to apply rules to the number of associated records an entity has.
• The partialNullsPass option was added to the existsIn rule. This option allows rules to pass when some columns are null.

Other Changes

There are many other great new things in 3.3.0. Refer to the migration guide for all the greatness 3.3.0 brings.

Deprecations

3.3.0 will deprecate a number of features. Refer to the deprecated features for more details. Deprecated features will not be removed until 4.0.0.

Unless there are major issues with the 3.3.0-beta release, we will have a release candidate and stable release packaged in the 4-5 weeks. The documentation for 3.3.0 is now available in the book.

As always, a huge thanks to all the community members that helped make this release happen by reporting issues and sending pull requests.

Download a packaged release on github.