XF2.3 feedback and comments

[Taylor J]

Speaking of being able to use vanilla JS libraries, how is XenForo handling that? Most libraries require an npm/yarn/bun install which would usually need some sort of bundler/builder to be able to connect the two different ecosystems (rails with esbuild/webpacker/importmaps). Has there been something new built to handle that

 

[Jeremy P]

We don't have any special handling for JS modules at present, so any libraries would need to be pre-bundled in a way that exposes browser globals. In the long term there's plenty we can do to modernize our JS usage further, but of course we have to balance that against backwards-compatibility concerns. Requiring add-on developers to rewrite their JS without jQuery is a big enough ask for the time being (understandably so).

 

[Sysnative]

My navigation seems to have gone missing on all themes:



Add-ons disabled, fresh default theme with no modifications.

 

[Jeremy P]

Per your other thread, did you try editing a public navigation item in the control panel and saving it? There's a stale cache bug.

 

[Sysnative]

Per your other thread, did you try editing a public navigation item in the control panel and saving it? There's a stale cache bug.

Yup - even new items don't appear. I'll add a new item and wait for some of the other caches' to see if that resolves.

 

[Jeremy P]

If you enable debug mode, does the same server error get triggered?

 

[Sysnative]

If you enable debug mode, does the same server error get triggered?

It does, but disabling all nav items except the new one seems to work. I guess it's the same bug so all good if that's already got a fix on its way.

 

[Taylor J]

We don't have any special handling for JS modules at present, so any libraries would need to be pre-bundled in a way that exposes browser globals. In the long term there's plenty we can do to modernize our JS usage further, but of course we have to balance that against backwards-compatibility concerns. Requiring add-on developers to rewrite their JS without jQuery is a big enough ask for the time being (understandably so).

Understandable! If the team were able to incorporate say Esbuild as the bundler somehow that would actually help out with backwards compatibility as addon devs and even the team could use anything they would want, including jQuery or React. I'll probably get around to writing up a suggestion post about this sometime this week if I remember.

 

[fiebrelectora]

Hopefully throughout this week we can see beta 2

 

[James]

Hopefully throughout this week we can see beta 2

Tomorrow

 

[Jeremy P]

Understandable! If the team were able to incorporate say Esbuild as the bundler somehow that would actually help out with backwards compatibility as addon devs and even the team could use anything they would want, including jQuery or React. I'll probably get around to writing up a suggestion post about this sometime this week if I remember.

I don't think much stands in the way of add-on developers using anything they want as is, they're just responsible for bundling it themselves. That said, there's definitely room for improving the core experience. I actually have a personal esbuild script which reads add-on build.json files for bundling which might see the light of day eventually, but likely not for 2.3.

 

[Arantor]

Doesn’t that run into the risk of demanding npm etc be available on the server?

 

[Jeremy P]

Only for development, add-on builds ship the bundled JS.

 

[fiebrelectora]

Tomorrow

 

[stromb0li]

I think this may have been asked, but is there a preferred version of PHP to run with XF 2.3? 8.2 or 8.3?

 

[duderuud]

Both work but if possible use 8.3

From the new beta announcement:

However, even if you're running PHP 7.2 we strongly recommend upgrading to PHP 8.3 at the earliest opportunity for improvements in speed, security and stability. We also recommend MySQL 8.0 (or equivalent).

 

[Suzanne O]

I'm sure that my forum will run quicker with fttp that i'm finally getting.
I'm sure 2.3 will be awesome too!

 

[Arantor]

Only for development, add-on builds ship the bundled JS.

Doesn’t that then run into the risk of shipping multiple versions of the same library?

This is a hard problem to solve and I don’t know if there are any good ways to solve it.

 

[James]

Doesn’t that then run into the risk of shipping multiple versions of the same library?

This is a hard problem to solve and I don’t know if there are any good ways to solve it.

You can run a separate script to check for instanceof() of a library before you then load it into the page - so user end won't see an issue.

But yes if you package the scripts with your addon instead of using a cdn delivery method then there is chances of multiple instances of the same library being in the download packages but we're talking kilobytes.

 

[LuckyRiver]

Love the new feature of search as it now works like a charm, I have luck to get it working but it took me a while to figure it out how to make it work.

Beta1 it was working only on search thread but with Beta2, it is working on search everything.

I had a requirement for 2 chars length search and I only wanted the 2 columns which contains texts as members only search on them.

I'm running mysql 5.7 and php 7.4

Below are the steps which I noted so I can reuse them on live site.

Add the below 2 lines in mysqld.cnf

innodb_ft_min_token_size=2
ft_min_word_len=2

Restart mysql server.

Run the below sql queries

OPTIMIZE TABLE xf_post, xf_thread
Or you can optimize all tables if you want

ALTER TABLE xf_post ADD FULLTEXT (message);
ALTER TABLE xf_thread ADD FULLTEXT (title);

In forum root folder, as per instructions to manually update , you need to run
php cmd.php xf:convert-search-innodb

In admin console panel, in search options, Search minimum word length must also match the value you set for MYSQL FULLTEXT search

Now, I can search 2 chars words length in any order without the need for ES which is overkill for a small site like mine.

Hope it helps!