XF 2.3 What's new for developers in XenForo 2.3?

As promised, this week we're going to take a quick look at some of the more developer-centric changes coming in XenForo 2.3.

If a certain topic interests you more than others, click one of the links below:

• JavaScript
• SwiftMailer to Symfony Mail
• Doctrine Cache to Symfony Cache
• Updated Emogrifier
• Registry preload event
• Native IP conversion methods
• Support for class strings
• Updates to <time> tags - short date format
• Template names in HTML output
• AbstractCollection nth method
• Smart Javascript cache buster
• XF.createElement
• Template macro syntax changes
• Direct messages

Please note that the following libraries are no longer bundled with XF 2.3:

• ccampbell/chromephp
• doctrine/cache
• league/flysystem-ziparchive
• swiftmailer/swiftmailer
• symfony/debug
• web-token/jwt-signature-algorithm-eddsa
• web-token/jwt-signature-algorithm-hmac
• web-token/jwt-signature-algorithm-none
• web-token/jwt-signature-algorithm-rsa

While we do have a little more to show you, the next couple of weeks is going to be focused on getting XenForo 2.3 ready to be installed here and some additional "Have you seen...?" posts may arrive between then and a public beta release. Until then, thanks for coming on this journey with us.

 

[Chris D]

No problem. Sure more help can be provided but a more detailed discussion should be in its own thread.

 

[Ozzy47]

We can still use syntax like this in our addons <xf:macro template="myaddon_this_macros" name="username_row" /> without any issues to accommodate backwards compatibility?

FWIW this works in 2.2 and 2.3 and won't break (I beleive) if/when the old syntax is dropped.
<xf:macro template="myaddon_this_macros" name="username_row" id="myaddon_this_macros::username_row" />

 

[pegasus]

Math expressions in .less templates seem to now require being wrapped by parentheses e.g.

property: (0.8 * @xf-style-property);

Previously this was only necessary if the expression was ambiguous (such as multiple padding values).

 

[Mouth]

On the whole, Symfony Mail is essentially a ground up rewrite of SwiftMailer so the process of converting code to use Symfony Mail shouldn't cause too many problems.

Does XF 2.3 support Symfony's configurations for using 3rd party transports like SES, Mailgun, Mandrill etc.?

Sending Emails with Mailer (Symfony 7.1 Docs)

symfony.com

 

[Siropu]

Changes to XF.ajax

Nested data objects are not working anymore when passed to XF.ajax. You get data: [Object Object]. Do I need to use JSON.stringify() and json_decode() on the back-end? That would be a really ugly approach.

 

[Newsman]

Nested data objects are not working anymore when passed to XF.ajax. You get data: [Object Object]. Do I need to use JSON.stringify() and json_decode() on the back-end? That would be a really ugly approach.

yeah, i had to do this exact change for a function in my code to make it work again..

there's also an api endpoint i made that does not work anymore since like beta 5 or 4 which might be connected to this? dunno

 

[Siropu]

yeah, i had to do this exact change for a function in my code to make it work again..

It seems to work fine with POST method.

 

[Jeremy P]

If you're using a GET request then the request body is constructed using an URLSearchParams object and appended to the URL. Using GET requests with bodies is generally bad practice.