3.4 release notes

The most significant change in this release is the removal of revision support (i.e. undo/redo/recover functionality on pages) from the core django CMS. This functionality will be reinstated as an optional addon in due course, but in the meantime, that functionality is not available.

What’s new in 3.4

  • Changed the way CMS plugins are rendered. The HTML div with cms-plugin class is no longer rendered around every CMS plugin. Instead a combination of template tags and JavaScript is used to add event handlers and plugin data directly to the plugin markup. This fixes most of the rendering issues caused by the extra markup.
  • Changed asset cache-busting implementation, which is now handled by a path change, rather than the GET parameter.
  • Added the option to copy pages in the page tree using the drag and drop interface.
  • Made it possible to use multi-table inheritance for Page/Title extensions.
  • Refactored plugin rendering functionality to speed up loading time in both structure and content modes.
  • Added a new Shift + Space shortcut to switch between structure and content mode while highlighting the current plugin, revealing its position.
  • Improved keyboard navigation
  • Added help modal about available shortcuts
  • Added fuzzy matching to the plugin picker.
  • Changed the downcast_plugins utility to return a generator instead of a list.
  • Fixed a bug that caused an aliased placeholder to show in structure mode.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented aliased content from showing correctly without publishing the page first.
  • Added help text to an Alias plugin change form when attached to a page to show the content editor where the content is aliased from.
  • Removed revision support from django CMS core. As a result both CMS_MAX_PAGE_HISTORY_REVERSIONS and CMS_MAX_PAGE_PUBLISH_REVERSIONS settings are no longer supported, as well as the with_revision parameter in cms.api.create_page and cms.api.create_title.
  • In cms.plugin_base.CMSPluginBase methods get_child_classes and get_parent_classes now are implemented as a @classmethod.

Upgrading to 3.4

A database migration is required because the default value of CMSPlugin.position was set to 0 instead of null.

Please make sure that your current database is consistent and in a healthy state, and make a copy of the database before proceeding further.

Then run:

python manage.py migrate
python manage.py cms fix-tree

Backward incompatible changes

Apphooks & Toolbars

As per our deprecation policy we’ve now removed the backwards compatible shim for cms_app.py and cms_toolbar.py. If you have not done so already, please rename these to cms_apps.py and cms_toolbars.py.

Permissions

The permissions system was heavily refactored. As a result, several internal functions and methods have been removed or changed.

Functions removed:

  • user_has_page_add_perm
  • has_page_add_permission
  • has_page_add_permission_from_request
  • has_any_page_change_permissions
  • has_auth_page_permission
  • has_page_change_permission
  • has_global_page_permission
  • has_global_change_permissions_permission
  • has_generic_permission
  • load_view_restrictions
  • get_any_page_view_permissions

The following methods were changed to require a user parameter instead of a request:

  • Page.has_view_permission
  • Page.has_add_permission
  • Page.has_change_permission
  • Page.has_delete_permission
  • Page.has_delete_translation_permission
  • Page.has_publish_permission
  • Page.has_advanced_settings_permission
  • Page.has_change_permissions_permission
  • Page.has_move_page_permission

These are also deprecated in favor of their counterparts in cms.utils.page_permissions.

To keep consistency with both django CMS permissions and Django permissions, we’ve modified the vanilla permissions system (CMS_PERMISSIONS = False) to require users to have certain Django permissions to perform an action.

Here’s an overview:

Action Permission required
Add Page Can Add Page & Can Change Page
Change Page Can Change Page
Delete Page Can Change Page & Can Delete Page
Move Page Can Change Page
Publish Page Can Change Page & Can Publish Page

This change will only affect non-superuser staff members.

Warning

If you have a custom Page extension with a configured toolbar, please see the updated example. It uses the new permission internals.

Manual plugin rendering

We’ve rewritten the way plugins and placeholders are rendered. As a result, if you’re manually rendering plugins and placeholders you’ll have to adapt your code to match the new rendering mechanism.

To render a plugin programmatically, you will need a context and request object.

Warning

Manual plugin rendering is not a public API, and as such it’s subject to change without notice.

from django.template import RequestContext
from cms.plugin_rendering import ContentRenderer

def render_plugin(request, plugin):
    renderer = ContentRenderer(request)
    context = RequestContext(request)
    # Avoid errors if plugin require a request object
    # when rendering.
    context['request'] = request
    return renderer.render_plugin(plugin, context)

Like a plugin, to render a placeholder programmatically, you will need a context and request object.

Warning

Manual placeholder rendering is not a public API, and as such it’s subject to change without notice.

from django.template import RequestContext
from cms.plugin_rendering import ContentRenderer

def render_placeholder(request, placeholder):
    renderer = ContentRenderer(request)
    context = RequestContext(request)
    # Avoid errors if plugin require a request object
    # when rendering.
    context['request'] = request
    content = renderer.render_placeholder(
       placeholder,
       context=context,
    )
    return content