December 30th, 2017

Breadcrumb NavXT 6.0.2

Posted by John Havlik in WordPress > Plugins

This is the second, and hopefully last, bug fix release of the 6.0 branch of Breadcrumb NavXT. Four bugs were fixed in this release: Two issues with bcn_display/bcn_display_list, an issue with page hierarchy, and an issue with how the settings page displayed the Breadcrumb Separator.

In rewriting bcn_breadcrumb_trail::display, a common set of code is now used for both bcn_display_list and bcn_display. However, there was an error in 6.0.0 and 6.0.1 where a requisite parameter was not passed into the new bcn_breadcrumb_trail::display when calling bcn_display_list.

The $reverse parameter for bcn_display and bcn_display_list, while reversing the order of the breadcrumbs, neglected to handle the separator and element classes correctly. Changes made to bcn_display in 6.0.0 introduced part of this issue. Reviewing past releases, improper handling of the element classes had been part of bcn_display_list for quite a while.

In the refactoring of the code handling posts, the code that handles pages is now the same as any other hierarchical post type. However, this depends on internally set page hierarchy type and page hierarchy display settings. Since these settings are not user facing, there was a way for them to become corrupt. This results in pages not having their parent’s in the breadcrumb trail.

In the settings page, the Breadcrumb Separator and the Paged Template were changed from regular text inputs to textboxes. Changes to the text input in adminKit 2.0 changed how HTML was handled. While the fields handled HTML, HTML entities (e.g. >) were rendered by the browser. This could cause confusion as this behavior was inconsistent with the other settings fields.

Lastly, a warning is now raised if bcn_breadcrumb::type is not an array.

As always, you can grab the latest version of Breadcrumb NavXT from the Breadcrumb NavXT page. If you experience any issues with this version of Breadcrumb NavXT, please leave a comment on this post detailing the issue.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

December 28th, 2017

Breadcrumb NavXT 6.0.1

Posted by John Havlik in WordPress > Plugins

This is the first, and hopefully only, bug fix release of the 6.0 branch of Breadcrumb NavXT. Two bugs were fixed in this release. An issue where changes to the hierarchy type for any post type would not save was fixed. Additionally, the issue where the blog display setting was ignored was fixed.

The first issue was due to some rewrites to the adminKit class that handles the output of the settings form elements. As part of these changes, the radio button element was rewritten. A bug was introduced where the value for each radio element was improperly set to current setting value rather than using the value parameter passed into the function.

The second issue was due to the massive reworking of the bcn_breadcrumb_trail class. In the process of making the fill function pass in the state into the do_* functions, the code handling the inclusion/exclusion of the blog breadcrumb was erroneously partially removed. This provided inconsistent behavior between single posts and various archives.

Lastly, the Blog Template and Blog Template (Unlinked) settings were removed. Since these correspond to the Post (post type) root page, they have been ignored since the introduction of root pages. As they do not affect the output of the breadcrumb trail, they are being removed.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

December 26th, 2017

Breadcrumb NavXT 6.0.0

Posted by John Havlik in WordPress > Plugins

Holy refactored bcn_breadcrumb_trail class Batman! For the first major release in four years, the focus was on improving Breadcrumb NavXT’s internal components. On the new features front, two new filters were added. Additionally, HTML tags are now available for the included widget’s pretext field. On the bug fix front, two UI/UX bugs involving settings groups were fixed in the settings page. Finally, code containing calls to functions deprecated in PHP 7.2 was reworked to remove the deprecated function calls.

One of the largest changes in this version was the way the bcn_breadcrumb_trail class works internally. For end users, the functionality should be the same. However, for developers digging into the inner workings of the plugin, things have changed. Previously, the do_* functions occasionally contained calls to functions that depended on the state of the global $wpdb variable. Much of the effort put into 6.0.0 was to change this. Now fill() handles all state determination. This is advantageous for cases that require passing in the state to the appropriate do_* function.

Hook Changes

Ignoring deprecations (more on those below), there are four filter changes in Breadcrumb NavXT 6.0. One filter gained an additional parameter, and three new filters were added. A third parameter containing the name of the post type (when applicable) was added to bcn_show_tax_private. bcn_default_hierarchy_display and bcn_default_hierarchy_type were added to facilitate overriding the default choices Breadcrumb NavXT makes for CPTs before the user has save settings. Lastly, bcn_display_attributes was added to replace bcn_li_attributes.

Deprecations

As part of a major refactoring of the bcn_breadcrumb_trail class, several functions were deprecated, and a couple were removed. Below is a summary of the changes.

Deprecated Functions:

bcn_breadcrumb_trail::display_list()
bcn_breadcrumb_trail::do_attachment()
bcn_breadcrumb_trail::do_archive_by_date()

Deprecated and Removed Functions:

bcn_breadcrumb_trail::do_front_page()
bcn_breadcrumb_trail::find_type()

Deprecated Filters:

bcn_li_attributes

For more information on these deprecations, see the Changes to Note Before Upgrading to Breadcrumb NavXT 6.0 article. This article covers these changes in greater detail.

Translations

As explained in the Breadcrumb NavXT Translations Moving to Language Packs article, Breadcrumb NavXT has moved away from shipping translations with the plugin. This is the first release to ship without any included translations, all translations are available via language packs, or from the Breadcrumb NavXT Translation Project.

If you would like to contribute to translating Breadcrumb NavXT, please visit the Breadcrumb NavXT Translation Project. A big thanks to all of the translators that have contributed to the translations in the past and continue to contribute.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

October 27th, 2017

Changes to Note Before Upgrading to Breadcrumb NavXT 6.0

Posted by John Havlik in WordPress > Plugins

Breadcrumb NavXT 6.0 is now in the feature freeze phase of development. At this point, it is necessary to disclose the changes in Breadcrumb NavXT 6.0 that will require the attention of users and developers.

Unlike a typical release, quite a bit has changed under the hood in this release, hence the bump up from 5.7 to 6.0. Development for 6.0 focused heavily on reworking the bcn_breadcrumb_trail class. This rework impacts some extension plugins to Breadcrumb NavXT. If you have written custom code extending Breadcrumb NavXT, please see the deprecations section for functions and filters that have been deprecated in Breadcrumb NavXT 6.0.0.

Impacted Extensions

Over the next several weeks, leading up to the Breadcrumb NavXT 6.0 release, the following plugins will receive updates to support Breadcrumb NavXT 6.0. If a plugin listed below is in use on your site, please update to the version listed below before updating to Breadcrumb NavT 6.0.

Breadcrumb NavXT Menu Magic

Before upgrading the Breadcrumb NavXT 6.0.0, please upgrade Breadcrumb NavXT Menu Magic to 1.5 or newer. Failing to do so will result in PHP errors being thrown.

Breadcrumb NavXT Multidimension Extensions

Before upgrading the Breadcrumb NavXT 6.0.0, please upgrade Breadcrumb NavXT Multidimension Extensions to 2.5 or newer. Failing to do so will result in PHP errors being thrown.

Requires PHP5.4 and WordPress 4.6

Breadcrumb NavXT 6.0.0 officially bumps the required PHP version to PHP5.4 or newer. It is nearly impossible to test on PHP5.4 now, so support has to be dropped. Likewise, WordPress 4.6 or newer is now required for Breadcrumb NavXT 6.0.0.

Deprecations

As part of a major refactoring of the bcn_breadcrumb_trail class, several functions were deprecated, and a couple were removed. Additionally, one filter was deprecated as part of this refactoring effort.

bcn_breadcrumb_trail::display_list()

The display() function within bcn_breadcrumb_trail was refactored to be more generic, including a new $template parameter, as a result display_list() has been deprecated. This function was deprecated in Breadcrumb NavXT 6.0.0, however it still exists as a wrapper to the proper call to display() including the requisite template.

bcn_breadcrumb_trail::do_front_page()

There was substantial overlap in functionality between do_front_page() and do_home(). As a result, do_home() was made more generic and do_front_page() was removed from Breadcrumb NavXT 6.0.0.

bcn_breadcrumb_trail::find_type()

This was an auxiliary function to do_root() that determined the post type to use for the root. Since do_root() was refactored such that it no longer determines state, this function was removed in Breadcrumb NavXT 6.0.0.

bcn_breadcrumb_trail::do_attachment()

In refactoring do_post(), the functionality that was special to do_attachment() was absorbed into do_post(). These two functions were very similar in previous releases and it was a natural target for refactoring. This function was deprecated in Breadcrumb NavXT 6.0.0, however it still exists as a wrapper to the proper call to do_post().

bcn_breadcrumb_trail::do_archive_by_date()

In the refactoring effort to remove state determination logic from the lower level functions, this function’s behavior was split out into three functions: do_day(), do_month(), and do_year(). Internally, Breadcrumb NavXT now calls a combination of these three functions as needed. This function was deprecated in Breadcrumb NavXT 6.0.0, however it still exists as a wrapper to the proper call to do_day(), do_month(), and do_year().

bcn_li_attributes

As part of deprecating bcn_breadcrumb_trail::display_list(), the bcn_li_attributes filter has been deprecated in Breadcrumb NavXT 6.0.0. Replacing it is the new bcn_display_attributes filter.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]