Pimcore 5 released!

Some new features

• Direct Editing in Object Grid
  Added an editor for multi-select, objectsMetadata, external image, video, table data type, multihrefMetadata, image, link, multiHref, href, hotspot image

• Allow Objects in Link Datatypes & Tag
  - Allow object references in links in addition to assets and documents.
  - Object links should then be resolved using a custom link generator implementation
  - Affected: document link page type, document link tag, document WYSIWYG tag, object link datatype, object WYSIWYG datatype

• Workspace Permission Analyzer
  The tool tells you which permissions the user has for a resource + gives you a hint which user/role workspace settings are relevant.

• Object Data-Type: Dynamic Select
  - Extends the existing select datatype
  - Available option key/values are dynamically provided by a data provider class (like calculated fields, ...)
  - Allows implementing any dynamic values for a select data-type due it's data provider approach

• Added application logger tab to the object editor
  Showing all related logger entries there

• Objects: Possibility to set `Input` and `Numeric` to unique
  Having the possibility to instruct the system to ensure that the concrete field of the concrete type of entities will have a unique value. One use case: importing nomenclatures from an external system. In that case, you should keep the external ID and you have to ensure that it will be unique, you will make an integer field and set it to be unique. Pimcore will ensure that you will not store duplicate external IDs. The unique check of values it lets the administrator know that it can not store the duplicate value.

• Improve rendering experience of very complex objects
  Huge performance improvement for big objects in the admin interface.

• Tag & Snippet Manager Improvements
  - Added configuration option to disable a tag without having to delete it
  - Added configuration option to not embed a tag in edit mode
  - Do not embed code when X-Purpose: preview HTTP-header is sent

Questions and answers

We have not only worked on Pimcore 5, but also cared about the documentation, which had to change due to the transition to the Symfony stack. Check it out at https://pimcore.com/docs/5.x/index.html

• Can Pimcore 4 projects be updated to Pimcore 5?
  An automatic update will not be possible. We want to make the transition between Pimcore 4 projects to Pimcore 5 as seamless as possible. Although there will not be a web-based automatic updater between prior versions and Pimcore 5, the manual work needed is marked down by the compatibility bridge for Pimcore 4 and the inclusion of a Zend view compatible rendering engine. The compatibility bridge, which is realized as a so-called Symfony bundle, comes with the old Zend Framework 1 stack and with the actual bridge that provides the fall back to ZF1 functionalities. If you have been creating Pimcore plugins with a lot of custom functionalities that are based on the Zend Framework, you have to certainly invest more time for the transition, than for converting sites and applications that are only based on Pimcore standards. For details have a look at our documentation.

• What is the future of Pimcore 4?
  The Zend Framework 1 itself reached its End of Life (EoL) on the 28th of September 2016. Pimcore 4 is the last Pimcore version built on top of the Zend Framework 1 and isn’t going to be actively further developed as soon as Pimcore 5 is released. But of course, we’ll provide fixes for critical bugs and security issues for another year (until end of 2018) to give you enough time to migrate your projects to the newest version. Past that point, we will offer custom bug and security fixes for Pimcore 4 on-demand only to users of the Pimcore PEL license and a valid SLA.

• What are Symfony components used within Pimcore 5?
  Pimcore 5 is a standardized Symfony application based on the latest full stack of Symfony and uses various components like Service Container, Routing, Configuration and Bundles from this leading PHP framework. For views and templates, the default rendering engine will be Symfony’s PHP engine enhanced with some neat functionalities such as an optional Zend\View flavored syntax that makes Symfony templates just look like Zend views (and makes migration a charm!).

• Do I have to train my customers again on the Pimcore 5 interface?
  The interface of Pimcore 5 stays the same, besides some cosmetic changes. So you do not have to train your customers again. The big revolution in Pimcore 5 is all under the hood in the core architecture of Pimcore.

The ensemble

This release was led by Mathias Geat, with the help of these fine people. There are 95 contributors with props to the Pimcore project so far, a new high.

So stay tuned...
The Pimcore Crew