:-( What's New asset type deprecation 😢

[Douglas (Douglas (@finnatic at @waikato))]

What's New - Asset Listing - Manuals | Squiz Matrix 5 Documentation mentions:

Warning:
This asset type has been deprecated as of version 5.4.5.0. For more information, please view the Deprecations page.

and I’ve read the original squizmap (11746, closed) which suggested that a search page could be made to work…

In my experience, I’ve found What’s New assets to be convenient and easy to setup. It is possible to do the same with search pages, but past experiences have left me jaded and thinking of them as a bit clunky with the extra settings required.

I’d be hopeful that the intended replacement (rolling what’s new functionality into asset listings) would be as easy as what’s new assets are now.

[Ratherbesurfing]

Oh no, I’m going to commiserate with you on learning this.
I always reach for a What’s New asset to serve my recent updates, latest news feed etc. needs. Hopefully any replacement won’t be trigger dependent.

[Douglas (Douglas (@finnatic at @waikato))]

There seems to be a number of decisions being made at Squiz to simplify the asset choices we have. It would be appreciated to hear that explained at some point.

[Bart (Bart Banda)]

A list of all deprecations can be found here: https://matrix.squiz.net/manuals/deprecations

Each one links to the Roadmap tracking idea which has more information on why it’s getting deprecated.

But yes, the overall goal is to reduce the complexity of the system and have less asset types that basically do the 90% of the same thing as their other counterparts and have more dynamic single asset types instead.

[evanwills]

Is there any documentation for creating a “What’s new” type listings using a standard “Asset listing” page?

I’ve looked in the “Asset listing” documentation and poked at creating one but was unable work out how to make it work.

[Douglas (Douglas (@finnatic at @waikato))]

@evanwills

I’ve looked in the “Asset listing” documentation and poked at creating one but was unable work out how to make it work.

I’ve assumed that the What’s New listing uses the date information to help restrict the list of assets returned from whatever query asset listings make to the underlying databases.

Building a replacement with the existing Asset Listing mechanism would seem to be less effective, but presumably you should be able to sort by the date fields available, and then perform some sort of similar restriction.

Hopefully the final replacement will have the same performance as the previous asset type, but with the functionality rolled into the asset listing asset type.

[JohnGill]

It’s not possible to emulate What’s New with an Asset Listing, the date restriction code hasn’t been added yet (as of 5.5.4.2).

You can mostly emulate it with a Search Page (no Link Value Filtering), although it seems slightly slower than the equivalent What’s New Page (~15% in my test but that will probably depend heavily on the content).

Of course, if you’re a rebel you could forge ahead with What’s New assets and just create them via one of the APIs

js_api.createAsset({
  type_code:"page_whats_new",
  parent_id:1,
  asset_name:"lazarus",
  link_type: 1
})

Assuming that Asset Listings are actually going to gain the missing functionality before v6 lands, I don’t see what harm would come from continuing to create them. (Although it wouldn’t surprise me if they end up replacing What’s New assets with Search Pages instead of Asset Listings).

[evanwills]

@Douglass

I’ve got no idea why I didn’t think of sorting by date then filtering. Thanks.