We've removed the ability to directly reference JS and CSS files
for form fields and other SilverStripe features in favour of a common bundle built by Webpack.
The logical next step is to make the framework module free of frontend dependencies,
which should simplify its operation, and avoid another time intensive "npm install" on a module.
This has been made obsolete, since those files are all included in the main bundle (see bundle-lib.js).
They should not be referenced individually (e.g. through Requirements::block() or Requirements::javascript()).
The bundle is generated by running “webpack” directly - gulp is no
longer needed as an intermediary. The resulting config is a lot shorter,
although more configuration is pushed into lib.js.
Modules are shared between javascript files as global variables.
Although this global state pollution is a bit messy, I don’t think it’s
practically any worse than the previous state, and it highlights the
heavy coupling between the different packages we have in place.
Reducing the width of the coupling between the core javascript and
add-on modules would probably be a better way of dealing with this than
replacing global variables with some other kind of global state.
The web pack execution seems roughly twice as fast - if I clear out my
framework/client/dist/js folder, it takes 13.3s to rebuild. However,
it’s not rebuilding other files inside dist, only the bundle files.
CSS files are now included from javascript and incorporated into
bundle.css by the webpack. Although the style-loader is helpful in some
dev workflows (it allows live reload), it introduces a flash of
unstyled content which makes it inappropriate for production.
Instead ExtractTextPlugin is used to write all the aggregated CSS
into a single bundle.css file. A style-loader-based configuration could
be introduced for dev environments, if we make use of the webpack live
reloader in the future.
Note that the following features have been removed as they don't appear to be
necessary when using Webpack:
- UMD module generation
- thirdparty dist file copying
LeftAndMain.js deps: Without it, ssui.core.js gets loaded too late,
which leads e.g. to buttons being initialised without this added behaviour.
API Remove DataList::applyFilterContext(), superseded by DataList::createSearchFilter()
API SearchFilter::getSupportedModifiers() added to support supported modifier inspection
API Introduce HTMLFragment as casting helper for HTMLText with shortcodes disabled
API Introduce DBField::CDATA for XML file value encoding
API RSSFeed now casts from the underlying model rather than by override
API Introduce CustomMethods::getExtraMethodConfig() to allow metadata to be queried
BUG Remove _call hack from VirtualPage
API Remove FormField::$dontEscape
API Introduce HTMLReadonlyField for non-editable readonly HTML
API FormField::Field() now returns string in many cases rather than DBField instance.
API Remove redundant *_val methods from ViewableData
API ViewableData::obj() no longer has a $forceReturnObject parameter as it always returns an object
BUG Fix issue with ViewableData caching incorrect field values after being modified.
API Remove deprecated DB class methods
API Enforce plain text left/right formfield titles
