Release Notes for XWiki Enterprise 4.2 Milestone 3

Version 26.6 by Eduard Moraru on 2012/09/11
Warning: For security reasons, the document is displayed in restricted mode as it is not the current version. There may be differences and errors due to this.

This is the third and final milestone of the XWiki Enterprise 4.2 version (Roadmap). This release brings new and improved UIs for file upload, logging configuration and the experimental install/upgrade wizard. For developers this release introduces a new file upload widget, attachment picker and documents macro minor improvements, the ability to add skin extensions located in JAR files, a new field (mime-type) to index attachments by and an extension of the xar format that allows the identification of an imported xar as a proper extension.

New and Noteworthy (since XWiki Enterprise 4.2 Milestone 2)

Improved upload UI

The new HTML5 FileUploader has been integrated in a few places:

  • The standard attachment upload form
  • The Import section of the Administration

See below for more details about this feature.

New logging administration UI

It's now possible to review and modify the log level for all registered loggers.

loggingadmin.png

IRC Bot Application Improvements

The IRC Bot Application now recognizes XAR import events and when receiving one, it doesn't send subsequent IRC notifications for modified or created documents to avoid spamming the IRC channel.

New Content Macro

The new Content macro allows to enter content in any of the supported Syntaxes and thus allows to have content written in various syntaxes. For example:

This is in **bold**

{{content syntax="confluence/1.0"}}
This is *bold* too!
{{/content}}

Experimental install/upgrade wizard

Accessing a wiki page in view mode after an upgrade or when the database is empty (new install) will trigger a wizard that will allow you to install or update the default set of wiki pages and to upgrade or downgrade the extensions you may have previously installed.

The wizard currently has two steps. In the first step you can see which XWiki distribution you are running and what is its recommended default set of wiki pages (the default user interface). You should install, upgrade or downgrade the UI so that it matches the distribution version.

Distribution-MainUI.png

The step has three possible actions:

  • Skip means 'go to the next step and ask me again after a server restart'
  • Cancel means 'go to the next step and don't ask me again until I change my distribution'
  • Continue, only after the recommended UI version is installed

In the second step you can upgrade the installed extensions. We group them in two categories:

  • extensions that don't work with your current distribution but which have new versions available that are compatible with your current distribution. These extension require an upgrade.
  • extensions that should work fine with your current distribution but which have upgrades available. Upgrading these extensions is optional.

Distribution-OutdatedExtensions.png

You can refresh the list of extensions by clicking on the Reload button. The Skip and Cancel buttons have the same meaning as in the previous step. The Continue button is available only after the required upgrades are performed.

At the end you'll be redirected back to the wiki page you have accessed in the first place.

Miscellaneous

  • Display the request URL in the IRC channel when the Link Checker bot listener is active and a broken link is found, thus making it easier to reproduce and debug the broken link
  • The Chart macro will now automatically default to the inline Data Source type when not specified and the Chart Macro has some content.

For Developers

New HTML5 File Upload widget

The File Upload widget can enhance HTML input elements of type file to provide an interactive upload UI. It can submit files either automatically when the user selects local files, or after the user presses the container form's submit button.

To use this widget, it is enough to create a new instance of XWiki.FileUploader passing the target input element as the first parameter, and an optional configuration object as the second parameter.

new XWiki.FileUploader(targetInput, {
  autoUpload: true,
  progressAutohide: true
});

html5uploads.png

JSRX and SSRX

It's now possible by default to add skin extensions located in JAR files. Example usage:

$xwiki.jsrx("/lib/codemirror.js")
$xwiki.ssrx("/lib/codemirror.css")

Documents Macro improvements

The {{documents}} macro now supports specifying the list of columns to display. For example:

{{documents count="5" actions="false" space="Main" parent="Main.WebHome" columns="doc.title"/}}

would display:

documents-columns.png

Attachment Picker improvements

It is now possible to specify a different document for the source (and target in case of uploads) of attachments, using the new targetdocname macro parameter.

Search improvements

The Lucene index also stores the MIME type of the indexed attachments, allowing to customize the search to only include or exclude attachments of a certain type. The new field is named mimetype and it contains a valid MIME type string, as returned by the container in which XWiki is running. For example, add -mimetype:image/* to a query to exclude all image attachments from the results, or add mimetype:application/pdf to only search inside PDF attachments.

Remember that in case of an upgrade, you have to rebuild the entire index to have this new field for existing documents.

Extension Manager improvements

  • the custom Maven property <xwiki.extension.features> now accept any number of new lines and white spaces between elements
        <xwiki.extension.features>
          org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-oldcore,
          com.xpn.xwiki.platform:xwiki-core
       </xwiki.extension.features>
  • new custom properties added to overwrite standard Maven properties:
    • xwiki.extension.name to overwrite <name>
    • xwiki.extension.summary to overwrite <description>
    • xwiki.extension.website to overwrite <url>

XAR format improvement

It's now possible to indicate the extension identifier right in the XAR package descriptor (package.xml). Among other things this allow standard import UI to find what it currently importing and register it automatically as installed extension if it can be found in the registered repositories during import process.

The XAR Maven plugin automatically take care of adding this information to the generated package.xml for Maven project. If for some reason you need to indicate it by hand you can use the property <extensionId> under the the <infos> element in the package.xml file.

<package>
 <infos>
   <name>XWiki Platform - Extension - UI</name>
   <description>XWiki Extension Manager, an application for managing extensions in a wiki.</description>
   <licence></licence>
   <author>XWiki.Admin</author>
   <extensionId>org.xwiki.platform:xwiki-platform-extension-ui</extensionId>
   <version>4.2-SNAPSHOT</version>
   <backupPack>true</backupPack>
 </infos>
 <files>
    [...]
 </files>
</package>

Upgrades

The following dependencies have been upgraded:

  • Prototype.js 1.7.1
  • Jython 2.5.3
  • Pegdown 1.1.0 (used by the XWiki Markdown Parser)
  • Xalan 2.7.1

Miscellaneous

  • The AbstractMockingComponentTestCase testing framework class has been modified. Read the Testing page for more details on how to use it.

Translations

The following translations have been updated: 

Tested Browsers

Here's the list of browsers tested with this version (i.e. browsers that we've tested as working - Check the list of supported browsers):

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Firefox
11.0

Known issues

Backward Compatibility and Migration Notes

General Notes

You may also want to import the default wiki XAR in order to benefit from all the improvements listed above.

Always make sure you compare your xwiki.cfg and xwiki.properties files with the newest version since some configuration parameters were added. Note that you should add xwiki.store.migration=1 so that XWiki will attempt to automatically migrate your current database to the new schema. Make sure you backup your Database before doing anything.

Issues specific to XWiki Enterprise 4.2 Milestone 3

<issues specific to the project>

API Breakages

The following APIs were modified since version 4.1.4:

<clirr output here>
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