Progress Report - June 2022

This will be a short one - since not everything we've been working on this month has also been launched. And we don't want to bother yo...

This will be a short one - since not everything we've been working on this month has also been launched. And we don't want to bother you with every small thing we did, only the bigger exciting ones.

So here it is. Here's what's happened since our last report (June 13th):

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Maintenance

• things have been going really well, with more people working on maintenance than ever;
• we've fixed 11 issues in Backpack\PRO;
• we've fixed 20 issues in Backpack\CRUD;
• we've even fixed an issue in Backpack 4.1, even though we said we wouldn't 😔; but it was too big not to fix, an incompatibility with a supported PHP version;

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New Switch Field Type - FREE

You can now add a switch field instead of a checkbox, which looks a lot prettier:

And there are quite a few aesthetic customizations you can make, right from the field definition:

$this->crud->addField([
    'name' => 'checkbox',
    'label' => 'I have not read the terms and conditions and I never will.',
    'type' => 'switch',
    'tab' => 'Simple',
    // 'color' => 'danger',
    'options' => [
        '',
        '❌',
    ],
]);

I don't know about you, but I'm always going to use this instead of checkbox! 😀 You can read more about this field type in its docs. It's a free, non-breaking change, so you can easily get it with a simple composer update. Please say thanks to Antonio Almeida for creating this, it's his baby!

If you're wondering "how about the toggle addon" - that's still there, but it limited us in some respects. That's why we decided to refactor it, and include it in Backpack\CRUD. We'll keep maintaining digitallyhappy/toggle-field-for-backpack, but... no more features. So if you can, please use the official toggle instead.

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Next Up

Pedro has been working very hard on a few cool things. One of them is ExportOperation - a server-side alternative to the DataTables export we have now, that will:

• create a XLS/CSV/PDF with ALL the entries in the table, not just the current page;
• allow you to create custom exports, where you as a developer have the flexibility to show/hide/move columns, change column properties only in export... anything, really;

I think a lot of people will appreciate it. I know I will - I've been dying for an easy way to create an "export invoices" functionality, for accounting. Now it'll not just be possible, but easy 🎉 We're probably 80% done with it - so there's only 80% more left, right? 😅 Expect it next month, if not sooner. It'll most likely be available as part of PRO, so if you purchased that, you'll get it for free.

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That's it from us this month. A lot more has happened behind the scenes, that you'll see in the following months, but we shouldn't say anything yet.

Thanks for using Backpack, we love doing this for you 🙏

Cheers!