On Thursday, I released version 1.1.0 of the Solar Framework for PHP. Due to a small but critical bug in the PostgreSQL adapter, I released version 1.1.1 with the necessary fix earlier today. Change notes are here for 1.1.0, and here for 1.1.1.

The single biggest new feature in this release of Solar is a Markdown plugin set for DocBook, along with a new make-docbook command to convertAPI documentation to DocBook files. Previously, the Solar API documentation was wiki-like; now, we take the Markdown-based comments in the codebase and convert them to DocBook, and render the DocBook files in to HTML using PhD. (Incidentally, I tried rendering with xsltproc; after three hours, the processing was less than one-third complete. With PhD, rendering takes under five minutes for the entire API documentation set.)

Also, the make-model command now recognizes a star at the end of the model name, indicating it should make one model class set for each table in the database. For example, this will make one model class from the table "foo_bar" ...

./script/solar make-model Vendor_Model_FooBar

... but this will make a Vendor_Model class for each table in the database:

./script/solar make-model Vendor_Model_*

That kind of thing is helpful when getting started with an existing set of tables, or when you're updating your models after schema changes.

Other highlights include a series of small fixes, better CLI output in non-TTY environments, improved automation of CSRF form elements.

Finally, we've added a new manual chapter on user authentication, roles, and access control. Find out how, with some config settings, you can instantiate a single object and let it automatically handle user login/logout, role discovery, and access permissions for you! And if you want more direct control over the process, browse on over to these blog entries from CoolGoose:

If you haven't tried Solar yet, maybe now is the time: run through the Getting Started documentation and see how you like it!

(Cross-posted from the Solar blog.)

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