Tapestry Changelog

What's new in Tapestry 5.4 RC 1

Oct 30, 2015

INCOMPATIBLE APIS:
JavaScriptSupport:
Some existing methods of JavaScriptSupport were changed from returning void, to returning the JavaScriptSupport instance, to allow for chaining of calls. This interface is consumed by end-user code, but not generally implemented by end-user code.
BREAKING FEATURES:
ClassFactory Removed:
Tapestry's use of the Javassist bytecode library has been completely removed, along with many related services, such as ClassFactory, that were deprecated in 5.3. Use PlasticProxyFactory instead.
MarkupWriterFactory API changed:
The MarkupWriterFactory interface has 3 new methods, added to support the HTML5 rules for element endings. If you have any classes that implement MarkupWriterFactory (which is rare), they'll need to be modified to implement the new methods.
Injected Scripts at Bottom:
In prior versions of Tapestry, JavaScript libraries injected into the page (via the @Import annotation, or via JavaScriptSupport), were injected into the element of the HTML page, either at the end of the element, or before any existing element.
With this release, the Tapestry integrates with RequireJS to dynamically load libraries. This may affect a small number of JavaScript libraries, such as Google Analytics that need to be placed at the top of the page; in those cases, the library should be added to the template of your application's main layout component, instead of relying on @Import and JavaScriptSupport.
No Redirect On Form Validation Errors:
In prior releases of Tapestry, when a client-side form was submitted and there were server-side validation errors, Tapestry would perform a redirect-after-post to re-render the page; this meant that the ValidationTracker object that stores validation errors would, itself, need to persist to the new render request, causing a server-side session to be created. Starting in 5.4, the default behavior for server-side validation exceptions is to re-render the page content immediately, within the same request; this obviates the need to use a persistent field to store the tracker.
NEW FEATURES:
Component field visibility:
In prior versions of Tapestry, all instance fields of components had to be visibility private; starting with versions 5.3.2 and 5.4, this has been relaxed. Component fields may be protected, or package private (that is, no visibility modifier). Fields that are final, or annotated with @Retain may even be public. In any case, this makes it easier for pages to work with other pages in the same package, and for subclasses to more easily access the fields (including parameter fields, or injections) provided by base classes. This feature should be used with care, as it can lead to designs that are more difficult to maintain.
JavaScript Modules:
Prior releases of Tapestry primarily organized client-side logic in terms of JavaScript libraries. These libraries can be declaratively imported into the page (either during a full-page render, or during an Ajax partial page update). In addition, libraries can be combined together into stacks, which (in a production application) are combined into a single virtual asset.
The library approach is fundamentally limited in a number of ways, including namespace pollution and dealing with dependencies between libraries. Tapestry 5.4 introduces a parallel mechanism, based on RequireJS and the Asynchronous Module Definition as a way to speed up initial page load and organize client-side JavaScript in a more expressive and maintainable way.

New in Tapestry 5.3.8 (Nov 25, 2014)

New in Tapestry 5.4 Beta 6 (May 29, 2014)

NON-BREAKING CHANGES:
A new DeprecationWarning service exists to write runtime warnings about deprecated component parameters.
There have been sweeping changes to the client-side support in JavaScript, including the long-awaited abstraction layer. Tapestry is moving to the use of asynchronously-loaded modules, using the RequireJS library. Virtually all of Tapestry's existing JavaScript libraries are being recoded as JavaScript modules; in 5.5, the remaining JavaScript libraries will be removed.
The abstraction layer, the t5/core/dom module, is a set of wrappers that encapsulate most of the differences between Prototype and jQuery. By coding to the abstraction layer, it will be possible to swap out Prototype support for jQuery. Prototype will no longer be bundled with Tapestry starting in Tapestry 5.5. Ultimately it will be possible to efficiently support other foundation frameworks, such as MooTools or ExtJS, by providing your own implementation of the abstraction layer.
Prior releases of Tapestry would require several separate constructs to initialize client-side behavior:
A unique id, generated on the server, on a client-side element
A JavaScript library that extended T5.initializers with an initialization function
Creating a spec to describe behavior, including URLs and the unique client element id
Many similar client-side event handlers on specific elements (created by the initialization function):
Although this was well-structured, it had numerous pain points for developers, as well as some client-side performance issues. For example, it means that components that occur many times on the page will include many similar event handler functions.
Tapestry 5.4 represents a shift to a more modern, lighter approach. Behavior of components is encoded into data- attributes on the element, and logic shifts to a module that provides top-level event handlers on the document object. This is an overall win: it reduces the number of event handlers, solves some timing issues related to running initialization functions, deals with DOM updates better, and is overall more performant.
Tapestry is moving away from "magic class names" to a more uniform approach based on the use of HTML 5 compliant data- attributes.
Service proxies annotations:
The service proxies created by Tapestry-IoC for services defined on interfaces, not just a concrete class, now have the service implementation class annotations. The same now happens to annotations in service methods too.
SubModule Deprecated:
The SubModule annotation has been deprecated; the new ImportModule annotation does exactly the same thing, but is more clearly named.
Asset Improvements:
Prior versions of Tapestry created cacheable URLs for Assets that incorporated the application version number. The Assets were served with a far-future expires header: the client browser would not even need to check to see if the asset had changed.
Unfortunately, when any asset changed in a new deployment of the application, the version number needed to change, resulting in all assets being downloaded (because the application version number in their URLs changed).
In this release, individual assets are given a URL containing a checksum based on the asset's content. When the underlying file is changed, the asset will be served with the new URL, but unchanged assets will not be affected. This means that when redeploying your application, you'll see far less asset traffic, as most client web browsers will already have most assets (whose contents have not changed) in their local cache.
In prior releases of Tapestry, the response to an asset URL could be compressed (with GZip) if the client supported it, and the file was itself compressable. Compressable assets include CSS files and JavaScript, but not image format files (those have built in compression). The fact that two different versions of the file were available with the same URL could confuse some Content Delivery Networks. In Tapestry 5.4, compressed and uncompressed asset URLs are distinct.
Tapestry 5.4 now re-writes CSS files, expanding any url() references in them into fully qualify URLs; this is to allow for the checksum embedded into each URL, which breaks relative references.
Tapestry 5.4 introduces a new module, tapestry-webresources, which provides support for compiling CoffeeScript into JavaScript, Less into CSS, and for minimizing CSS and JavaScript. All processing takes place at runtime.
FormGroup Mixin:
This new mixin for Field components adds the outer and elements for a Field to layout correctly inside a Twitter Bootstrap form.
Glyphicon Component:
This new component renders a tag for a Bootstrap 3 Glyphicon.
DevTool Component:
A component that can be added to your application-specific Layout to provide some useful support when in development mode (but disabled in production mode):
Identifies the current page's class name and logical name
Re-render the current page
Re-render the current page with component rendering comments
Reset the current page's persistent state
Kill (invalidate) any HttpSession
Open the T5 Dashboard in a new window
Reload component classes:
T5Dashboard Page:
The T5 Dashboard is a new page the consolidates Tapestry 5.4's PageCatalog and ServiceStatus pages. The page is itself extensible, allowing libraries or applications to add their own tabs.
tapestry-test deprecated:
The tapestry-test module contains base classes used when writing TestNG, Selenium, and EasyMock tests. It has been deprecated; users are directed to the Spock Framework (as a replacement for TestNG and EasyMock), and to Geb (which is a vastly improved wrapper around Selenium, and works nicely with Spock).
The useful RandomDataSource class has been extracted into a new module, tapestry-test-data.
The code for launching an instance of Jetty or Tomcat has been extracted to a new module, tapestry-runner.
Select Component:
The Select component has a new "secure" parameter which can be "always", "never" or "auto". When "always", the submitted value must be listed somewhere in the SelectModel. When "never", this check is not performed. When "auto" (the default), the check is performed only if the SelectModel exists (is non-null) at the time of the submission.
@RequestParameter annotation improvements:
Now this annotation supports arrays: void onEvent(@RequestParameter("values") Integer[] values). Same conversion rules used to single values apply to arrays too.
Easy rendering of parts of a template to a string:
The new PartialTemplateRenderer service provides easy rendering to a string of blocks, component instances or any other object which implements RenderCommand or coerced to it.
Raw HTML in Alerts:
The Alert class and the Alerts component now support rendering raw HTML instead of just plain text.
BREAKING CHANGES:
tapestry-yuicompressor is replaced by tapestry-webresources:
The tapestry-yuicompressor module has been removed and superseded by tapestry-webresources.
With tapestry-webresources in place, you can write your client-side code in CoffeeScript (with the ".coffee" file extension) and Tapestry will take care of converting it, at runtime, to JavaScript.
This support is separate and optional, as it is adds several large dependencies.
By default, tapestry-webresources enables:
compilation of CoffeeScript to JavaScript (using Java's Rhino JavaScript engine)
compilation of Less to CSS
minification of CSS using YUICompressor's CSS minimizer
minification of JavaScript using the Google Closure compiler (in simple optimizations mode):
RenderSupport Removed:
The RenderSupport interface, which was deprecated in Tapestry 5.2, has been removed entirely.
FormFragment Component:
The FormFragment component's visibleBound parameter is no longer supported; it was used to make a decision about how far up the DOM above the FormFragment's client-side element should be searched when determining visibility. This may resurface in the future as a CSS expression, but is currently not supported.
Symbol tapestry.asset-path-prefix:
The definition of the symbol 'tapestry.asset-path-prefix' has changed; it no longer includes the leading and trailing slashes. The default in 5.3 was "/assets/", in 5.4 it is simply "asset".
A second symbol, "tapestry.compressed-asset-path-prefix" has been added; this is used when assets are to be compressed. It defaults to "${tapestry.asset-path-prefix}.gz". You should generally see "/asset" URLs for image files, and "/asset.gz" URLs for CSS and JavaScript.
Libraries de-emphasized:
JavaScript Libraries (including stacks) are being replaced with modules. Note that libraries are now loaded with RequireJS, which may mean that global values exported by the libraries are not visible; you should explicitly attach properties to the global JavaScript window object, rather than assume that the context (the value of this) is the window.
T5 and Tapestry namespaces all but eliminated:
Only a limited number of properties exported in the T5 and Tapestry namespaces (on the client) still exist; enough to continue to support the T5.initializers approach to page initialization that was used in Tapestry 5.3 and earlier. These will be eliminated in Tapestry 5.5.
New method on ResourceTransformer:
The interface org.apache.tapestry5.services.assets.ResourceTransformer has had a new method added: getTransformedContentType(). This makes it possible to determine which file extensions map to which content types (for example, a ResourceTransformer for CoffeeScript files, with extension "coffee", would map to "text/javascript").
Rendering Changes:
There have been some subtle changes to how rendering of page content (in both traditional and Ajax requests) occurs; such rendering now occurs deferred to a later stage of request processing, rather than immediately after a component event handler method returns a value.
Environment.cloak() and decloak() deprecated:
Related to the rendering changes, the cloak() and decloak() methods of the Environment service are deprecated and should not be invoked: they now throw an UnsupportedOperationException.
Zone component change:
Older versions of Tapestry included client-side support for an element with the CSS class "t-zone-update" as the actual element to be updated when new content is provided for the zone in a partial page render response. This feature has been removed with no replacement.
Scriptaculous Deprecated:
Tapestry code no longer makes use of Scriptaculous. Instead, Tapestry will fire events on elements, and user code may decide to animate them using whatever library is desired. The event names are defined in the t5/core/events module.
Floating Console:
On the client side, the "floating console" is now only used in cases where a native console is not available. The console should not be used to present information to ordinary users (Bootstrap provides Alerts for that purpose), but is only intended for use in development.
The floating console has also been extended with an improved UI and the ability to filter the content shown.
In development and testing it can be desirable to have the floating console always visible; in that case, add the attribute data-floating-console="enabled" to the element. However, the floating console can sometimes obscure page content and interfere with tests; data-floating-console="invisible" will enable the console, but keep it hidden; the messages written to the console will be visible in the page source.
Form.clientValidation parameter:
Prior releases of Tapestry mapped "true" and "false" values for Form.clientValidation to BLUR and NONE. This mapping was introduced in Tapestry 5.2, and has now been removed.
Support for validating fields on blur (i.e., when tabbing out of a field) has been removed. Validation now occurs when the form is submitted, or not at all. The ClientValidation.BLUR enum value has been deprecated and is now treated identically to SUBMIT.
Wait-for-page logic removed:
Tapestry 5.3 contained client-side code that attempted to prevent Ajax requests until after the page had loaded; this was based on the function Tapestry.waitForPage(). Server components no longer make use of this function, and the function itself now does nothing. A replacement approach to preventing the user from interacting with links and forms before the page initialization has completed may be implemented in the future.
However, once initial page initialization has occurred, the attribute data-page-initialized on the root HTML element is set to "true". In many cases, automated tests should be updated to wait for this attribute to be set after loading a new page.
Bootstrap 3:
Tapestry now includes a default copy of Bootstrap 3.0.1, in addition to its own default set of CSS rules. The Tapestry CSS from prior releases has been largely eliminated; instead components now refer to standard Bootstrap CSS classes.
Tapestry now automatically imports the "core" stack for all pages (in previously releases, the "core" stack was only imported if the page made use of JavaScript). Because of this, the Bootstrap CSS will always be available.
ValidationDecorator and ValidationDecoratorFactory are deprecated in 5.4 and will be removed in 5.5. The default implementation of ValidationDecorator now does nothing. All the logic related to presentation of errors has moved to the client, and expects and leverages the Bootstrap CSS.
Fields that require validation messages to be displayed fire events, and the default handlers show and update help blocks that appear (by default) beneath the fields. To get the full effect, you should enclose your fields inside .form-group elements, as described in the Bootstrap documentation: http://getbootstrap.com/css/#forms:
You may also use the new FormGroup mixin for most fields.
Bootstrap's JavaScript has been broken into multiple "shimmed" JavaScript modules; e.g., "bootstrap/modal" to enable the JavaScript to support Bootstrap's modal dialogs. These modules do not export any value, but they do establish dependencies: to Bootstrap's "transition" module to enable animations, and ultimately to "jquery".
Form element components:
TextField, PasswordField, TextArea, and Select now render the CSS class attribute form-control; you may add additional CSS class names with the class informal parameter. Generally, you will want to add an enclosing element with col-md-x CSS class control the size of the element (otherwise it will stretch to 100% of the available width).
LabelComponent:
The Label component now renders the CSS class attribute as "control-label"; you may add additional CSS class names with the class informal parameter.
Error Component:
When Tapestry must present a validation exception, it will often dynamically create the p.help-block needed to display the message; it does a reasonable job of positioning the new element just after the field, or just after the .input-group containing the field. The Error component can be used to explicitly place this element.
Also, note that part of the styling of the element is predicated on containment inside a .form-group (which may have the has-error selector added or removed).
BeanEditor / BeanEditForm:
The property edit blocks contributed to the BeanBlockSource service should expect to be nested inside a div.form-group, which is provided around the editor for each property.
ClientBehaviorSupport:
This service, primarily used by built-in components in Tapestry 5.3, is no longer useful in 5.4. The service still exists, but the methods do nothing, and the service and interface will be removed in 5.5.
JavaScriptSupport Extended:
New methods have been added to allow JavaScript modules to be "required" into the page; it is possible to invoke the exported function of a module with JSON-compatible parameters; a module may also export multiple names functions that can be invoked.
Palette Component:
The selected property is now type Collection, not specifically type List. It is no longer allowed to be null. You may need to provide a "prepare" event handler to initialize the property before it is read by the Palette component.
Autocomplete Mixin:
The Autocomplete mixin has been rewritten to use Twitter typeahead.js; this implies it will also force jQuery onto the page, to support the typeahead.js library. In addition, typeahead.js does not support multiple tokens, so this behavior (available in prior releases) has been removed.
RenderNotification Mixin:
The timing of this mixin has changed, it now has the @MixinAfter annotation, so it triggers its events after the component to which it is attached has executed its @BeginRender phase, and before the component executes its @AfterRender phase.
LocalizationSetter service:
The method setNonPeristentLocaleFromLocaleName() was renamed to setNonPersistentLocaleFromLocaleName() to correct the typo (the missing 's').
OperationTracker Extended:
The OperationTracker interface has had a new method added, for performing an IO Operation (that may throw IOException).
FormSupport Extended:
The FormSupport interface has a new method, storeCancel(), which stores a component action that is only executed if the containing form is canceled.
Session Locking:
Tapestry now uses a lock on access to the HttpSession; a shared read lock is acquired when reading session attribute names; an exclusive write lock is acquired when reading or writing session attributes. Locks, once acquired, are kept until the end of the request. A new configuration symbol can be used to turn this feature off, reverting to Tapestry 5.3 behavior.
AssetPathConstructor:
The interface for AssetPathConstructor was changed incompatibly, to allow for individual asset checksums.
Link and LinkSecurity:
The enum type LinkSecurity was an internal class in 5.3 despite being used in methods of the public Link interface. It has been moved to package org.apache.tapestry5; this represents a minor incompatible change to the Link interface (which is rarely, if ever, implemented outside of the framework).
StreamableResource Extended:
StreamableResource has been modified, adding a new getChecksum() method; this interface is rarely, if ever, used or implemented by application code.
MutableComponentModel Extended:
MutableComponentModel has been modified, adding a new `doHandleActivationEventContext()' method to help check activation context exactness; this interface is rarely, if ever, used or implemented by application code.
IoC Module classes moved to new packages:
Traditionally, Tapestry IoC Module classes have lived in the same package as the service interfaces they define, and at the same time reference implementation classes in a separate (usually internal) package. This is not a desirable approach, as proper practices is to avoid cases where separate packages import classes from each other.
To resolve this, new modules packages have been created, and module classes have been moved there. Since module classes are typically not used directly by end-user code, this is not expected to be a disruptive change.
tapestry-test and TapestryTestConstants:
Several constants defined in org.apache.tapestry5.test.TapestryTestConstants have moved to a new class, org.apache.tapestry5.test.TapestryRunnerConstants in the new tapestry-test-constants module. tapestry-core has a dependency on module tapestry-test-constants that is only needed when making use of the PageTester facility. When using PageTester, you will need to make tapestry-test-constants a testRuntime dependency.
AbstractValidator base class:
The constructor for AbstractValidator has changed to include an instance of JavaScriptSupport.
CSS Changes:
Where Tapestry-specific CSS still exists (in support of the Palette component and the Tree component), the "t-" prefix has been removed. This may affect applications that overrode the Tapestry CSS rules to adapt Tapestry to the application look and feel.
The Grid component no longer emits CSS class names, instead it renders data attributes into Grid headers, rows, and cells, such as data-grid-row="first", data-grid-property="title", etc. These attributes may still be referenced using CSS rules where desired.

Tapestry Changelog

What's new in Tapestry 5.4 RC 1

New in Tapestry 5.3.8 (Nov 25, 2014)

New in Tapestry 5.4 Beta 6 (May 29, 2014)

New in Tapestry 5.3.7 (Sep 5, 2013)

New in Tapestry 5.3 (Nov 28, 2011)