January 26, 2011

TYPO3 4.5 LTS: Extbase/Fluid features and improvements

Category: Core, TYPO3

With TYPO3 4.5 LTS, a new version of Extbase and Fluid is shipped, which contains several major features like Dependency Injection and Fluid Widgets. This article gives an overview about the improvements in Extbase and Fluid, with links to more detailed information.

Stone by stone we're stabilizing the bridge to Phoenix.
(Image Credits: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/605543)

Extbase and Fluid are shipped in version 1.3, containing numerous major features and a large number of bugfixes. Thanks to everybody submitting issues, verifying them and providing patches!

Although we strive to be as backwards compatible as possible, there are a few possibly breaking changes you should be aware of.

NOTE: This release updates table definitions, so please visit the Install Tool or the Extension Manager, and update tables!

Major Features

Extbase 1.3 contains the following major features:

Dependency Injection, enabling you to loosely couple your classes.
Fluid Widgets, enabling you to build rich templates easily
With the FLUIDTEMPLATE Content Object, you can use Fluid not only for extensions, but also for page templates.

Breaking Changes

There are a few breaking changes you need to be aware of:

Furthermore, some internals in Extbase concerning the Dispatcher and the Configuration Manager have changed. If you use non-public APIs, you should have a look at the full list, which contains detailed upgrade instructions.

Minor features

Extbase also comes with a bunch of minor features, which can still be very helpful to you in solving day-to-day problems. These are described below:

Configurable Plugin Namespaces allows you to influence the URI generation in your Extbase plugins.
Automatic target page determination is especially helpful when a plugin is spread over multiple pages.
Default Orderings and Query Settings inside Repositories increase efficiency in custom repositories.
Furthermore, it is now possible to use TypoScript objects for setting the Storage PID.
Last but not least, plugins can now be registered as new content element.