DreamFactory 3.0 Early Access Release Now Available

We are excited to announce availability of DreamFactory 3.0 early access release. This release is the culmination of several months of hard work, and is undoubtedly the most significant platform release in more than 2 years. This release is ready to be cloned via GitHub by way of the 3.0-beta branch. Docker users can spin up the 3.0 release made available via our Docker repository.

So what's new in this release? Let's review the key features.

New User Interface

The most notable enhancement is a brand new interface. While the 2.X interface works just fine, it is shall we say rather utilitarian in nature. But there's nothing wrong with adding a little aesthetic appeal, right? So while we've kept the user interface layout intact (for now), you'll find that everything looks much shinier:

By the way, the new UI release coincided with the launch of our completely revamped website (https://www.dreamfactory.com/). Be sure to check it out if you haven't already!

Automated Linux "Genie" Installers

DreamFactory talks to a lot of data sources and third-party services, and for this reason developers have done so many amazing things with the platform. But installing and configuring all of the necessary drivers can be a pretty intimidating process. Our Docker environment goes a long way towards alleviating these issues however understandably not everybody is using Docker so we wanted to ease the installation process for other users.

The result are two (soon to be 4) new installation scripts found in the installers directory. These installer scripts are used in conjunction with Debian and Ubuntu, and install all of the dependencies you need to run DreamFactory! If you're running one of our commercial editions, the installers will additionally assist in the installation of the Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle drivers!

Python 3 Support

The DreamFactory Platform has long supported four scripting engines, including Node.js, PHP, Python, and V8JS. Scripting support is undoubtedly one of DreamFactory's most popular features, not only because it's used to add business logic to API endpoints, but also because you can create entirely new APIs using the Scripted Services connector. To put the popularity of this feature into perspective, we are aware of at least two customers who are running more than 400 scripted APIs within their DreamFactory environments!

One of these customers uses Python exclusively, and requested Python 3 support not only because they wanted to take advantage of various libraries that have been ported to Python 3. Always happy to prioritize customer requests, we added Python 3 support to help them out and also because official Python 2.7 updates are slated to cease on January 1, 2020.

For users running Python 2 scripts, have no fear! We added Python 3 support, and did not remove Python 2 support. When creating a new scripted service or adding logic to and endpoint, you'll have the option of selecting between the two versions, as depicted in the following screenshot:

Updates to the GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket Connectors

There's nothing particularly exciting to talk about here, other than we've additionally done quite a bit of maintenance work on the source control connectors, refactoring code and upgrading the Bitbucket integration to support the latest API release.

So What's Next?

As we move towards a production release, we'll be fixing bugs and adding a few more features to the platform:

• Restricted Administration and API Auditing capabilities. We're certainly burying the lede by casually mentioning this feature so late in the post. This is going to be a huge new addition to the platform, and will undoubtedly warrant a blog post unto itself.
• Add CentOS and Fedora genie installers. These installers have been extensively tested by customers, and so in the coming weeks we'll be adding it alongside the Debian and Ubuntu installers.
• Upgrade installation scripts' Oracle drivers to 18.5

We'd Love Your Feedback!

We're very excited to share this release with the DreamFactory community, and would greatly appreciate your feedback! Please download, install, and try to break the software, sending comments, complaints, and suggestions to code@dreamfactory.com!