XenForo 2.3 Released Full 2.3.10

Today we are releasing XenForo 2.3.0 Release Candidate 5. While the majority of this release is focusing on bug fixes and stability, there are a few noteworthy changes.

Automatic legacy file clean up​

XenForo installations after upgrading to XenForo 2.3 will have a number of files sitting in the file system which are no longer used. Any XenForo installation that has been around for a while, will to a lesser extent, have a similar issue. These files on their own shouldn't present any issue, but at the same time, keeping them around doesn't make much sense either.

There are three approaches to cleaning up legacy files automatically.

To address a backwards compatibility issue with some add-ons, we are today releasing XenForo 2.3.0 Release Candidate 4. If you are running Release Candidate 3 already we encourage you to upgrade as soon as possible. If you were previously affected by issues with certain add-ons or experience other issues, please let us know via a bug report in the first instance.

This release also fixes the issue with admin search returning an error.

This week in addition to a bunch of bug fixes, we've also been doing a spot of housekeeping in our code. The following is quite technically heavy so if you're a non-developer, shield your eyes and read the less boring bits.

Much wider usage for class strings​

As a reminder, XenForo 2.3 brings with it support for using native PHP class strings. For example, originally we used "class short names" to point to certain classes. While these were easy to write, it makes refactoring classes difficult, and you need these PHP doc comments to hint to code editors what object is ultimately returned in the code:

PHP:
<span>/** @var \XF\Entity\User $user **/</span><br><span>$user</span> <span>=</span> \<span>XF</span><span>:</span><span>:</span><span>em</span><span>(</span><span>)</span><span>-</span><span>&gt;</span><span>create</span><span>(</span><span>'XF:User'</span><span>)</span><span>;</span>

Our preference going forwards is using class strings:

PHP:
<span>$user</span> <span>=</span> \<span>XF</span><span>:</span><span>:</span><span>em</span><span>(</span><span>)</span><span>-</span><span>&gt;</span><span>create</span><span>(</span>\<span>XF<span>\</span>Entity<span>\</span>User</span><span>:</span><span>:</span><span>class</span><span>)</span><span>;</span>

Because PHP natively understands these special strings, the issues with type hinting are no more, and doing things like renames of classes or moving classes becomes a much more trivial exercise.

Throughout the core XF code now, starting with RC3, we have replaced the majority of these legacy class short names with native class strings.

XenForo & Add-ons 2.3.0 Release Candidate 1 Released​

It's finally here, the first of a series of release candidates for the XenForo 2.3.0 stable release. We still have a bit more work to do and other changes and improvements in the pipeline but at this point the most serious bugs have been tackled and we don't expect many more releases before we can declare it is ready for a stable release.

We strongly recommend anyone testing 2.3 during this pre-release period upgrade as each pre-release version is released.

More specific details regarding bugs fixed in this release can be found in the resolved bugs forum.

This is pre-release software. It is not officially supported.
We do not recommend running it in production.

Please remember that this is pre-release software. It contains known bugs and incomplete functionality. We do not recommend running pre-release software in a production environment, and support is limited at this time to questions here on the community forums.

Add-ons and custom styles may be broken after upgrading to 2.3. You must test your add-ons thoroughly or look for updates. Be especially careful with add-ons that cover similar features to ones that are added to 2.3; these may conflict with the core XenForo data. If data conflicts are found, they will need to be resolved in a new add-on release or by removing the add-on before upgrading to 2.3.

If you choose to run pre-release software, it is your responsibility to ensure that you make a backup of your data. We recommend you do this before attempting an upgrade. If in doubt, always do a test upgrade on a copy of your production data.

All customers with active licenses may now download the new version from the customer area.

Download XenForo 2.3.0 Release Candidate 1​

From the licensed customer area​

Alongside the release of XenForo 2.3.0 Release Candidate 1, we are also releasing updated versions of each of our official add-ons:

• XenForo Media Gallery 2.3.0 Release Candidate 1 (Includes Security Fix)
• XenForo Resource Manager 2.3.0 Release Candidate 1
• XenForo Enhanced Search 2.3.0 Release Candidate 1

Customers with active licenses for these add-ons may download the new versions from their customer area.

Download official add-ons​

From the licensed customer area​

Requirements​

The following are minimum requirements:

• PHP 7.2 or newer
• MySQL 5.7 and newer
• All of the add-ons listed here require XenForo 2.3.
• Enhanced Search requires at least Elasticsearch 7.2