Apostrophe 2.102.0 released: "saving" indicator, "disableInactiveAccounts" option, defaults don't prevent intentionally blank entries, and more

[boutell]

• Apostrophe now displays “Saving… Saved” indicators near the context menu in the lower left indicator. In our UX tests, users often did not realize Apostrophe automatically saved their work and were concerned by the lack of an explicit save button. In addition, Apostrophe no longer attempts to save your remaining changes via a synchronous HTTP request when you close the page, because this is deprecated in all browsers and disabled in many. Instead, Apostrophe uses the standard “you have unsaved changes, are you sure you wish to leave this page?” dialog. Together with the “saving… saved” indicator, this provides a mechanism for preventing lost work that is robust in modern browsers.

This does impact Apostrophe’s “advisory locking” mechanism that warns users if another user is already editing. Since we cannot guarantee a synchronous request to unlock the page will ever be received, we have instead shortened the expiration time for document locks to 30 seconds. Since these are refreshed every 5 seconds there should be no negative impacts in typical use.

Thanks to Freshworks for making this improvement possible via Apostrophe Enterprise Support.

• New disableInactiveAccounts option, which can be set like so:

{
  // in your project level lib/modules/apostrophe-users/index.js file
  disableInactiveAccounts: {
    neverDisabledGroups: [ 'admin' ],
    // After 30 days without logging in, the account is marked disabled
    // on next login attempt, until an admin explicitly enables it again
    inactivityDuration: 30
  }
}

If you enable this option you must set both sub-options explicitly.

• A longstanding bug relating to schemas has been fixed. Previously, if you attempted to clear a string field that had a def property, that field would be repopulated with the def value. This was never intended; def is only for the initial population of a newly created object. If you were relying on this bug, update your code to use apos.schemas.newInstance(schema) from the start so that you begin with an object that has the right defaults for each field. Note that pieces, pages, etc. already do this.

• Added a bodyAttributes block to outerLayoutBase.html. You may override this block to add new attributes to body without overriding the entire outerLayoutBase.html template. It is a best practice to not override this template, use the provided blocks.

• Fields of type attachment with required not set to true now work properly.

• You may now set the loginUrl option of the apostrophe-login module to change the login URL from /login to something else. Thanks to Giuseppe Monteleone for this contribution.

• help property is now supported for array fields.

• Uploads with a capitalized file extension are now accepted where appropriate. Thanks to Fernando Figaroli for this contribution.

• When editing a join with pages, a nonfunctional edit pencil icon is no longer displayed. Actual inline editing of page settings from another page may be a 3.0 feature.

Workflow 2.31.0

• A regression introduced into the Batch Force Export feature in version 2.29.0 has been fixed. This regression prevented the documents directly selected from being force exported, unless related documents were also selected. Thanks to Michelin for making this work possible via Apostrophe Enterprise Support.

• When you log in, workflow now defaults to draft mode. Defaulting to live mode caused a great deal of user frustration as users expected to be able to edit right away. However, you can set the defaultMode option for the apostrophe-workflow module to draft, live or preview to override this. Thanks to J. Garijo for contributing this feature.

• Private locales are now locked down fully even in cases where they have hostnames, subdomains, prefixes, or defaultLocaleByHostname configuration that might otherwise imply they should be visible to the public. Thanks again to Michelin.