J2.5:What's new in Joomla 2.5

The "J2.5" namespace is a namespace scheduled to be archived. This page contains information for a Joomla! version which is no longer supported. It exists only as a historical reference, it will not be improved and its content may be incomplete and/or contain broken links.

Lots of things.

...and:

• New Access Control System - Allows site administrators control over who can view and manage content.
• Unlimited Depth Organizational Model - Gives site administrators and content creators user-defined category levels that allow for the creation of a category tree with as many or as few levels for organizing articles and other content as needed.
• One-Click Extension Updates - Allows users to keep sites secure and controlled by simplifying the process of updating extensions.
• Semantic XHTML Layouts - Provides a better baseline for content presentation.

...and:

Administrators

Introduction

• Consistent UI
• Consistent Features
• Richer sample data
• IE 7+, Firefox 3.x, Safari 4.x
• PHP 5.2.4+
• MySQL 5.0.4 (allows for wide varchars)

Administrator

• Menu Changes
• Submenu consistency

Toolbar Features

• Save
• Save & Close
• Save & New
• Save as Copy
• Expired session will return to the page you were on then you got logged out (can be hit and miss)
• Most search filters allow you to search for a record id via [ id:123 ]
• "Parameters" are now referred to as "Options"
• Template Styles
• Integrated Trash Management
• Consistent archive support for most content
• Extension Installer Improvements

Module Enhancements

• Publish up and down
• Add option to display on all pages "except" selected
• Expanded Category System
• 404 Page Redirection
• Better Menu Management
• Alternative layouts for content, modules and menus (taken from the home template)

New Templates

• Atomic
• Beez2
• (Administrator) Bluestork (replaces Khephri)
• (Administrator) Hathor
• Legacy layer in Milkyway
• Backend supports layout overrides
• New Modules
• New Plugins
• Content Languages
• User Login Permissions
• Activate selected users from the user list now (and filter)
• Administrator registration approval
• Polls component removed
• New codemirror editor

SEO Improvements

• Meta decription and keywords for categories
• Articles can change the page title

Global Configuration

• Add site name to titles
• Default Access Level
• Set Metadata Language (buggy)
• Unicode Aliases
• Cookie domain and path
• User Setting moved to User Manager -> Options
• Media Settings moved to Media Manager -> Options
• Debug Modules - allows you to enabled to disable the tp=1 feature
• Server Timezone now a location, not an integer offset
• New Global Permissions tab

User Manager

• Can activate a user from the list now
• User can be assigned to multiple groups
• Manage user groups
• Manager content access levels

Media Manager

• Flash uploader fixed

Menu Manager

Menus List

• Rebuild button to press when you brick the menu

Items List

• Menus support the language filter
• Default now called Home
• Home is now clickable in the menu item list
• A separate home can be set for different languages

New batch operations

• Set access level
• Copy or move to another part of this or another menu

Edit Item

• Improved "Type" selector with human readable view and layout names
• Note field added
• New window target
• New Language assignment
• New Template style

New options for the menu links and pages themselves

• Link title attribute
• Link CSS style
• Menu image is changed to a modal selector
• CSS class for page heading
• Page meta description
• Page meta keywords
• Robots options

Articles Manager

• Frontpage is now referred to a Featured
• Article manager uses submenu to quickly skip between articles , categories and featured
• Sections and categories are now merged.

Articles List

• "Missing move and copy; filter by author"
• New column to show language
• Filtering by language available

Article Edit

• Created by user now selected by modal popup
• New ability to set the page title from the article
• Define create, delete, edit and publishing permissions

Categories

Category List

• Nested view
• Filtering on language

Edit Category

• New note field
• Section replaced with ability to assign a parent category
• Ability to assign content language

New Options (not previously available in 1.5)

• Assign alternate layout
• Define create, delete, edit and publishing permissions
• Meta description
• Meta keywords
• Alternative page title
• Meta author
• Meta robots

Banners

Banners list

• • • Missing copy toolbar button
• New archive toolbar button
• New columns to show meta keywords, purchase type and language
• New filtering by client and language

Edit Banner

• New type toggle for Image or Custom (dynamically changes the available form fields)
• New alt text field for image
• New language field

New Options

• Ability to set the created date
• Ability to set start and finish publishing times
• Ability to set the purchase type
• Ability to track impressions
• Ability to track clicks
• Use own prefix ?
• Tags renamed to meta
• Contacts
• Messaging
• Newsfeeds
• Search
• Weblinks
• Redirect

Extensions Manager

Discover

• Module mgr
• Plugin Mgr
• Template Mgr
• Language mgr

Misc

• Auto create linked contact when creating new user ??

Access Controls

• Introduction
• User Groups
• Access Levels
• Permission Layers
• How Permissions are Inherited
• How to debrick your site

Developers

Introduction

• PHP 5.2.4+
• MySQL 5.0.4 (allows for wide varchars)
• IE7+, Firefox 3+, Safari 4+
• Focus on code consistency
• Focus on code reduction

Usage of PHP Native Functions where possible, for example:

• JSimpleXML extend the native simple_xml class
• JDate extends the DateTime class
• Native INI parser to load languages

Removed features

• ADODB compatibility methods in database classes
• DOMIT (unsupported XML library)
• Legacy mode (includes global $mainframe, etc)
• JTemplate (based on patTemplate)
• patTemplate (templating engine)
• PDF support
• PEAR libraries (due to license incompatibilities)
• phpgacl
• PHP 4.0 and 5.0 compatibility files
• XStandard Editor

Deprecated Features

• JController::_acoSection
• JController::_acoSectionValue
• JController::authorize()
• JController::setAccessControl()
• JDatabase::stderr()
• JDate::offest
• JDate::setOffset()
• JDate::toFormat() - use JDate::format() instead
• JException::toString()
• JFactory::getXMLParser()
• JHtmlGird::access()
• JHtmlImage::administrator - use JHtml::image instead
• JHtmlImage::site - use JHtml::image instead
• JHtmlList::accesslevel()
• JHtmlList::specificordering() - use JHtml::_('list.ordering')
• JHtmlList::category()
• JHtmlSelect::optgroup() - see JHtmlSelect::groupedList()
• JLanguage::_parseLanguageFiles - renamed to parseLanguageFiles
• JLanguage::_parseXMLLanguageFile - renamed to parseXMLLanguageFile
• JLanguage::_parseXMLLanguageFiles - renamed to parseXMLLanguageFiles
• JObject::toString - replaced with magic method
• JRegistry::getNameSpaces()
• JRegistry::getValue()
• JRegistry::makeNameSpace()
• JRegistry::setValue()
• JPane - See JHtmlSliders
• JParameter - replaced by JForm
• JSimpleXML, JSimpleXMLElement - Use JXMLElement instead, based on the native SimpleXMLElement
• JTable::canDelete() - models or controllers should be doing the access checks
• JTable::toXML()
• JToolbarHelper customX(), addNewX(), editListX(), editHtmlX(), editCssX(), deleteListX()
• JUser::authorize() - Use JUser::authorise()
• JUtility::dump()
• JUtility::array_unshift_ref() - Not needed in PHP 5
• JUtility::getHash() - Use JApplication::getHash()
• JUtility::getToken() - Use JFactory::getSession()->getFormToken()
• JUtility::isWinOS() - Use JApplication::isWinOS()
• JUtility::return_bytes() - See InstallerModelWarnings::return_bytes()
• JUtility::sendMail() - Use JFactory::getMailer()->sendMail()
• JUtility::sendAdminMail() - Use JFactory::getMailer()->sendMail()
• JXMLElement::data() - Provided for backward compatibility
• JXMLElement::getAttribute() - Provided for backward compatibility

Database

• JTable now automatically looks up the fields from the database schema
• New JDatabaseQuery - A chained CRUD query builder
• New JDatabase::getNextRow
• New JDatabase::getNextObject
• JDatabase::loadAssocList - Now takes a second argument to just return the value of a column
• JDatabase::setQuery - Added chaining support

Important Schema Changes

• New jos_extensions table to list all extensions
• Components table information moved and split between jos_extensions and jos_menu (special menu called _adminmenu)

The old phpgacl (jos_core_acl*) and jos_groups tables have been reworked into:

• jos_assets
• jos_user_usergroup_map
• jos_usergroups
• jos_viewlevels
• Archived state changed from a value of -1 to +2

Improved MVC

Models

• JModelList
• JModelForm
• JModelAdmin
• Format handling (eg JSON)
• Sub-controller handling

Controllers

• JControllerForm
• JControllerAdmin
• JController::setMessage takes second arg to set the message type
• JController can set the default view
• Added chaining support to several JController methods

Views

• Semantic core output
• Milkyway legacy layouts
• The old component parameters are not automatically added to the menu anymore. You need to explicitly put them in the layout XML files.
• The menu manager will now detect additional layouts for a given view in the default template.

Form API

Event manipulation

• onContentPrepareForm
• onContentPrepareFormData

Translation and Language Support

• Support for unicode slugs, eg, SEF URL's with Greek characters
• 3-letter languages now supported, xxx-XX
• All existing language keys have been refactored

INI files must validate

• Upper case key with no spaces, alphanumeric characters and underscores
• Quoted values
• Double quotes within literal strings must use _QQ_ in the form KEY="<a href="_QQ_"index.php"_QQ_">Click</a>"

Javascript translation layer

• See the flash uploader script for an example

Local extension language files

Language file API

• Pluralisation support
• Transliteration support for ASCII or Unicode slugs
• Ignore Search Words
• Minimum search word length
• Custom language overrides
• System language file to support administrator menu and installation (.sys.ini)

Language switcher

• Language Filter plugin enables language switching
• Sets the automatic filtering via JFactory::getApplication()->setLanguageFilter(true)
• A frontend component with language support would test JFactory::getApplication()->getLanguageFilter(), which returns the selected language code from the Languages Module
• The language field can be a language code for a single language, or "*" to be displayed for all languages
• Community extension for language maintenance com_localise

Extension management

New installation types

Libraries

• Must include an XML manifest where type="library"
• Can only be installed into a sub-folder of /libraries/
• Can extend parts of an existing library, eg /libraries/joomla/database/database/oracle.php

Packages multi-installer

• Must include an XML manifest where type="package"
• A package is a zip of zip's

New install script can be provided with 5 methods:

preflight

• Runs before anything is run and while the extracted files are in the uploaded temp folder

Could allow for:

• secondary extraction of custom zip's
• version checks to be performed
• halting the installer on an error

install / update

• Runs after the database scripts are executed
• If the extension is new, the install method is run
• If the extension exists then update method is run if method="upgrade", otherwise assumes that the extension is not meant to be upgradable

postflight

• Runs after the extension is registered in the database
• Is not run for the uninstall process (nothing left to do obviously)

Discover

• Does not do any file copying, only works with what it finds
• Performs preflight, install and postflight
• Developer of installer has to language files??

Update site

• Can publish an XML manifest on your site that can include individual extensions and extension sets.

XML Manifest Changes

• <install> is deprecated - use <extension>
• New <update> tag. Takes a <schemas> tag which can define <schemapath>
• <params> and <param> tags are deprecated, use <fields>, <fieldsets> and <field> instead

File changes

• Installation manifest must be the same name as the extension, eg com_foobar/foobar.xml This helps with discovery (otherwise the function has to go through all the files in the extension folder
• Plugins are now in folders like modules and components
• See SVN/tests/_data/installer_packages/ for complete examples of all extensions and manifests.
• The method="upgrade" will compare individual files in the original and incoming manifests and will remove files as appropriate. However, it will not remove differences in the <folder> tags.
• Future support for rollback

Events

New Events

• onBeforeRender
• onContentBeforeDelete
• onContentAfterDelete
• onContentChangeState
• onContentPrepareForm
• onContentPrepareFormData
• onExtensionBeforeInstall
• onExtensionBeforeUpdate
• onExtensionBeforeUninstall
• onExtensionAfterInstall
• onExtensionAfterUpdate
• onExtensionAfterUninstall

Renamed Events

• onContentAfterSave
• onContentAfterTitle
• onContentAfterDisplay
• onContentBeforeDisplay
• onContentBeforeSave
• onContentSearch
• onContentSearchAreas
• onUserAuthenticate
• onUserAfterDelete
• onUserAfterSave
• onUserBeforeDelete
• onUserBeforeSave
• onUserLogin
• onUserLogout
• All content events (except for search and search areas) now pass a 'context' as the first argument to alert the plugin as to what type of content is being passed. The plugin event may or may not heed this context.

Categories

• Component can provide custom options for its own categories via optional category.xml
• Supported via JTableNested

Access Controls

• A thing that can be controlled by permissions is registered in the assets table
• JTable handles this transparently via asset_id field
• For view permissions, support is as simple as adding

$user = JFactory::getUser();

$groups = implode(',', $user->authorisedLevels());

$query->where('a.access IN (' . $groups . ')');

For action permissions, same format as in 1.5: $user->authorise($actionName, $assetName)

• OpenID library moved to plugin folder
• Geshi library moved to plugin folder
• JRegistry notes defaults to JSON (new format), dynamically converting existing data in INI format
• New JStream
• New JApplicationHelper::getComponentName
• Core icons moved to /media/
• Backward incompatible change to JEditor::display
• Added chaining support to JMail
• JFilterInput can no longer be called statically
• JHtml::image now supports relative paths
• All system images are overridable in the default template
• New JHtmlString
• Added wincache session handler for IIS
• New JFilterOutput::stripImages
• JPath::check takes second arg for separator (to pass to JPath::clean)
• Expanded configuration support through config.xml (multiple tabs)

Core actions

• core.login.site
• core.login.admin
• core.admin
• core.manage
• core.create
• core.edit
• core.edit.state
• core.delete
• Miscellaneous changes

Debug Plugin

• More tools for assisting with translation

Mootools 1.2/1.3

• Need to use document.id instead of $

Performance

Eliminate the usage of JTable for general browsing on the frontend

• Session drops the usage of JTable
• Item views use a dedicated question, not JTable->load

Known Issues

• Still Mootools 1.2. Will be upgrading to 1.3 during the beta process.
• Scaling issues to address

Notes

Releases

• Alpha 1: 22 June 2009
• Alpha 2: 25 October 2009
• Beta 1: 18 May 2010
• Beta 2: 2 weeks after Beta 1