Phalcon 2.1.0 RC1 released

We are excited to announce the immediate availability of Phalcon 2.1 RC 1!

This version is our first LTS version and it will be supported 3 years from its final release date. Also, this will be our last release candidate before the final version of Phalcon 2.1.

Phalcon 2.1 introduces a great number of improvements, striving to make Phalcon even a better framework. Final version will be available in two weeks.

NOTE: Some of these changes will break existing Phalcon 2.x applications. Please ensure that you have tested your application sufficiently before migrating your application to 2.1 for production purposes.

Changes in Phalcon 2.1

PHP 5.3 is no longer supported
Phalcon\Mvc\Model\Validation is now deprecated in favor of Phalcon\Validation
The default encrypt mode in Phalcon\Crypt is now changed to MCRYPT_MODE_CFB
Changed default hash algorithm in Phalcon\Security to CRYPT_BLOWFISH_Y
Changed constructor of Phalcon\Mvc\Model allowing you to pass an array of initialization data
Removed support for prefixes strategy in Phalcon\Loader
Phalcon\Mvc\View now supports many views directories
An absolute path can now be used for Mvc\View::setLayoutsDir
Fixed odd view behavior 1933 related to setLayout() and pick()
Phalcon\Di is now bound to service closures allowing use Phalcon\Di as $this to access services within the closures
If an object is returned after firing the event beforeServiceResolve in Phalcon\Di it overrides the default service localization process
Placeholders :controller and :action in Mvc\Router now default to /([\\w0-9\\_\\-]+) instead of /([\\a-zA-Z0-9\\_\\-]+)
Modifier #u (PCRE_UTF8) is now the default in regex based routes in Mvc\Router
Return false from an action disables the view component (same as $this->view->disable())
Return a string from an action takes it as the body of the response (same as return $this->response->setContent('Hello world'))
Return a string from an Mvc\Micro handler takes it as the body of the response
Mvc\Router\Route now escapes characters such as . or + to avoid unexpected behaviors
Closures used as handlers in Mvc\Micro are now bound to the $app instance
Routes now can have an associated callback that can override the default dispatcher and view behavior
Phalcon\Mvc\Model now implements JsonSerializable making easy serialize model instances
When destructing a Mvc\Model\Manager PHQL cache is cleared
Method isSetOption in Phalcon\Validation\ValidatorInterface marked as deprecated. You can now use hasOption instead
Added internal check allowEmpty before calling a validator. If it option is true and the value of empty, the validator is skipped
Added default header: Content-Type: "application/json; charset=UTF-8" in method Phalcon\Http\Response::setJsonContent
Phalcon\Events\Event now implements Phalcon\Events\EventInterface
Phalcon\Events\Event::getCancelable renamed to Phalcon\Events\Event::isCancelable
Removed Phalcon\Events\Manager::dettachAll in favor of Phalcon\Events\Manager::detachAll
Phalcon\Mvc\Model\Criteria::getOrder is renamed to Phalcon\Mvc\Model\Criteria::getOrderBy
Added method getOption() in Phalcon\Mvc\Model\RelationInterface
Added ability to spoof the HTTP request method
Added FULLTEXT index type to Phalcon\Db\Adapter\Pdo\Mysql
Fixed the use of the annotation router with namespaced controllers
Added Phalcon\Acl\RoleAware and Phalcon\Acl\ResourceAware Interfaces. You can now pass objects to Phalcon\Acl\AdapterInterface::isAllowed as roleName and resourceName, which will be automatically passed to the function defined in Phalcon\Acl\AdapterInterface::allow or Phalcon\Acl\AdapterInterface::deny by type
Phalcon\Acl\AdapterInterface::allow and Phalcon\Acl\AdapterInterface::deny have now a 4th argument - function, which will be called when using Phalcon\Acl\AdapterInterface::isAllowed
Phalcon\Acl\AdapterInterface::isAllowed has now a 4th argument - parameters; You can pass arguments for function defined in Phalcon\Acl\AdapterInterface:allow or Phalcon\Acl\AdapterInterface::deny as associative array where key is the argument name
Added method getActionSuffix() in Phalcon\DispatcherInterface
CLI parameters are now handled consistently
Added Phalcon\Mvc\Controller\BindModelInterface and associated model type hint loading through dispatcher.
Added Phalcon\Dispatcher::hasParam()
Phalcon\Cli\Console and Phalcon\Mvc\Application now inherit Phalcon\Application.
Fixed afterFetch event not being sent to behaviors
Fixed issue with radio not being checked when default value is 0 11358
Fixed issue with Model::__set that was bypassing setters 11286
Fixed issue with Model::__set that was setting hidden attributes directly when setters are not declared 11286
Added Phalcon\Cli\DispatcherInterface, Phalcon\Cli\TaskInterface, Phalcon\Cli\RouterInterface and Phalcon\Cli\Router\RouteInterface.
Added Phalcon\Mvc\Collection::update, Phalcon\Mvc\Collection::create and Phalcon\Mvc\Collection::createIfNotExist
Removed __construct from all interfaces 11410
Fire the dispatch:beforeException event when there is an exception during dispatching 11458
Added OR operator for Phalcon\Mvc\Model\Query\Builder methods: betweenWhere, notBetweenWhere, inWhere and notInWhere
Fixed bug of destroy method of Phalcon\Session\Adapter\Libmemcached
Added Phalcon\Cache\Backend\Memcache::addServers to enable pool of servers for memcache
Added setLastModified method to Phalcon\Http\Response
Added Phalcon\Validation\Validator\Date
Mcrypt is replaced with openssl in Phalcon\Crypt
Removed methods setMode(), getMode(), getAvailableModes() in Phalcon\CryptInterface
Added Phalcon\Assets\Manager::exists() to check if collection exists

PHP 7 support

Phalcon 2.1.x has beta PHP7 support, we expect to fix any blocking bug in the next two weeks before the final release. You can try Phalcon running on PHP7 by compiling from the 2.1.x branch using Zephir:

git clone https://github.com/phalcon/cphalcon
cd cphalcon
git checkout 2.1.x
zephir build --backend=ZendEngine3

After this, you only have to add extension=phalcon.so to your php.ini file.

New Package Infrastructure

We would like to share with you, our community, our plans for moving forward with regards to packaging and distributing Phalcon.

We have been researching many options to make the whole process easy, transparent and automated as possible. Our goal is to be able to use a continuous delivery system that will compile and package Phalcon immediately after each release. To achieve this, we chose to use the Packagecloud service to distribute Phalcon binaries.

This move will increase the availability of Phalcon in more Linux operating systems than currently available, and users will be able to use any built-in package manager of their operating system to install the framework. The available operating systems will be:

Debian
CentOS
RedHat
Amazon Linux
Fedora
LinuxMint
Oracle Linux
Raspbian
Scientific Linux
Ubuntu
elementary OS

In addition to the above, automation will reduce the human interaction currently needed to create each Phalcon distribution.

For the time being, each distribution will be manually compiled by the Phalcon Team. Our goal is not to change the framework and the way it works for the community, but rather the way it is distributed. For that we will ensure that the new delivery mechanism is tested sufficiently, before we fully switch to Packagecloud and deprecate our Launchpad repository.

This move will make Phalcon available to a much wider variety of Linux based operating systems and reduce the time needed to produce those packages.

We will announce in our blog when this change will happen, so for the time being you can keep getting new versions as you have been in the past.

Update/Upgrade

Phalcon 2.1 RC1 can be installed from the 2.1.x branch, if you don’t have Zephir installed follow these instructions:

git clone https://github.com/phalcon/cphalcon
cd cphalcon/build
git checkout 2.1.x
sudo ./install

If you have Zephir installed:

git clone https://github.com/phalcon/cphalcon
cd cphalcon
git checkout 2.1.x
zephir build

Note that running the installation script will replace any version of Phalcon installed before.

Windows DLLs are available in the download page.

As always, many thanks to everyone involved in this release and thanks for choosing Phalcon!

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