Notice: CMSB v2.02 Beta: Signup & Feedback thread

Hi everyone,

We've just released v2.02 beta 1 (beta list members will get an email with a download link shortly).

The major new feature is a new flash based multi-file upload component. This makes it WAY easier to upload lots of files at the same time. No more clicking "Browse..." for each file. There's a few other fun new features in there as well (see below).

If you're not already on the beta tester email list and you'd like to help beta test (you must own at least 1 CMSB license) please email me at dave@interactivetools.com and I'll add you to the list.

Here's a breakdown of that notable items from the changelog:

- Uploads: You can now upload multiple files at once with uploadify flash upload component

We're using a jQuery component from uploadify.com for this. It's actually pretty fun to use. Try clicking upload and then selecting a dozen files (either by holding shift or ctrl or by selecting a box with your mouse) and clicking upload.

- Viewers: Sort ordering can now be defined in viewer urls with orderBy=fieldname or fieldname DESC

This makes it very easy to sort a viewer list page multiple ways (eg: by price, product name, etc). We've written custom code to do this many times, now you can just create a link to ?orderBy=price DESC to let the user sort viewer lists the way they want.

- Viewers: min/max date searches now support date without time formatted as: YYYY-MM-DD

If you wanted to do date min/max range searches you previously had to enter a full MySQL format date like this: ?date_min=2010-01-01 00:00:00. Now you can just enter the date part and it figures out the rest (00:00:00 for _min searches and 24:00:00 for _max searches).

- Settings: Custom settings files can be created for dev domains, such as: /data/settings.localhost.php

If you've ever had to keep a local staging/development environment in sync with a live server you've probably noticed what a hassle it is to manage the /data/settings.dat.php file. You need different mysql details, upload paths, etc for each environment.

Now CMSB will automatically check for a settings file with the current domain name in it and use that if it's available. Just copy settings.dat.php and replace "dat" with your hostname or ip.

Note: When using this feature, always setup a new file for your dev environment and let production/live use the default one. That way if a domain name is added or changed it won't break things on the live site.

- Viewers: Added the following options to getRecords() for advanced MySQL users: 'groupBy' and 'having'

For advanced MySQL users (and to make forum support easier for us). If you know what "GROUP BY" and "HAVING" are, you can now pass them to getRecords with the 'groupBy' and 'having' options.

- Viewers: Added utility function mysql_escapef(), example: mysql_escapef("num = ? AND name = ?", $num, $name);

Another one for more advanced MySQL users. When writing custom MySQL you have to be careful to escape user input to avoid "SQL Injection Attacks" (Google for details). Basically this means passing any input to mysql_real_escape_string().

This can make simple queries like this:
'where' => "city = '$city' AND year = '$year' ",

Look a lot more complicated like this:
'where' => "city = '" .mysql_real_escape_string($city). "' AND year = '" .mysql_real_escape_string($year). "' ",

We cringe when we have to post code like this to the forum because we know it can be hard to follow for those newer to php/mysql.

What mysql_escapef does is lets you do is write your query with a ? where each value goes, then automatically escapes and inserts the values (you just add them on the end).

So now we get this:
'where' => mysql_escapef("city = ? AND year = ?", $city, $year),

- Viewers: getPrevAndNextRecords() now supports 'orderBy' option

We optimized the getPrevAndNextRecords() function and added an orderBy option to it. If you'd like to display links to the previous and next record on a detail page you can do that like this:

list($prevRecord, $nextRecord, $firstRecord, $lastRecord) = getPrevAndNextRecords(array(
'tableName' => 'news',
'recordNum' => $record['num'],
'orderBy' => 'createdDate',
));

And you could display links to the previous and next record like this:
<?php echo $prevRecord['_link'] ?> or <?php echo $nextRecord['_link'] ?>

- Misc Code and other minor improvements

And there was some of that as well. :)

Please post any feedback, questions or bugs you find! Thanks!

Thanks! :)