We are excited to announce that the Quick 3.0.0 beta has been released. You can install it today from ForgeBox:

box install quick@3.0.0-beta.1

What does that mean?

It means we are very close to releasing Quick 3.0.0! The code has been extensively tested, brave souls have tried the alpha and provided valuable feedback, and the docs have been updated with all the changes, improvements, and new features.

What has changed from the last release?

Very little has changed in the actual code base. In fact, there are no additional breaking changes since the first alpha. Here's what we've been up to:

• Standardizing argument names in new functions
• Speeding up the metadata caching
• Improving CI coverage to catch any regressions in future versions of ColdBox and Lucee
• Improving the error message when trying to access a relationship on an unloaded entity.

The big story of what has changed is the docs. All the changes, improvements, bug fixes, and new features have been updated. We also have a few new documentation features we think you'll enjoy:

Relationship Visualizers

Mapping relationships between SQL tables can be a bit tricky, especially when you aren't sure which attribute corresponds to which relationship argument. Now, the relevant relationships docs include a Relationship Visualizer that you can switch out the arguments and see the generated SQL in real time.

You can try out the visualizer for the BelongsTo relationship here.

Cookbook

We've added a new section to the docs called the Cookbook. This was inspired from the Vue docs. The Cookbook will serve as a way to share different patterns and approaches using Quick. It assumes prior knowledge of the basics and will be heavy on examples.

The Cookbook will also be very dependant on community support. When you solve a particularly interesting use case, we hope you will submit a Pull Request to the docs to share your approach with the community. Similarly, if you have a question on how best to approach a specific pattern or integrate with a library, open an issue with the cookbook label. Someone else might have already solved a similar problem.

We think the Cookbook will help continue to improve our documentation by showcasing high-level examples of using Quick in practice.

FAQ

We've also introduced a Frequently Asked Questions section to our docs. While the search functionality for the docs will help you uncover most answers to your questions, introducing an FAQ section allows us to answer specific, common questions and also to talk a bit more about the why behind the answer.

This is another place that is ripe for contributions. Please submit your questions using the faq label. Browse the questions left by others and submit a Pull Request to the docs to answer it. All answers will be attributed on the docs.

We really believe that between the Cookbook and the FAQ we can really step up the support that new and seasoned developers will have when they use Quick.

What is left to do before the stable release?

The focus now is to keep improving the docs and to update the two Quick templates to Quick 3.0.0, quick-with-auth and quick-tailwind-inertia.

When should we expect the stable release?

Everything is lining up for this to be published at Into the Box 2020! We'll share with you the major new features in the public keynote, and then you can come see how to build a real app with Quick 3.0.0 in my session Build a blog in 30 minutes with ColdBox and Quick

That's all, folks!

We hope you are as excited about Quick 3.0.0 as we are, and we are excited to hear your feedback!