Breaking: #102229 - Removed FlexFormTools->traverseFlexFormXMLData() 

See forge#102229

Description 

Class \TYPO3\CMS\Core\Configuration\FlexForm\FlexFormTools got a series of cleanup and removal patches.

The following public class properties have been removed:

  • $reNumberIndexesOfSectionData
  • $flexArray2Xml_options
  • $callBackObj
  • $cleanFlexFormXML

The following public methods have been removed:

  • traverseFlexFormXMLData()
  • traverseFlexFormXMLData_recurse()
  • cleanFlexFormXML_callBackFunction()

The following public methods have been marked @internal:

  • cleanFlexFormXML()
  • flexArray2Xml()
  • migrateFlexFormTcaRecursive()

The class is now a stateless service and can be injected as shared service without any risk of triggering side effects.

Impact 

In general, these changes should have relatively low impact on extensions, if they don't build additional low level functionality on top of the general TYPO3 Core FlexForm related features. Extensions like the TemplaVoila forks may need to have a look for required adaptions, though.

Using the removed methods or properties in TYPO3 v13 will of course trigger PHP fatal errors.

Affected installations 

Instances that extend functionality of FlexForm handling may be affected if they use methods of class FlexFormTools. This is a relatively rare case, most instances will not be affected when they just provide and use casual FlexForm definitions in extensions.

The extension scanner will find possible extensions that consume the methods or properties as a weak match.

Migration 

If at all, method traverseFlexFormXMLData() is probably the one used in extensions. The easiest way is to copy the method and it's recursive worker method to an own class.

Extension developers are however encouraged to refactor their code since traverseFlexFormXMLData() with its callback logic was ugly, hard to follow and maintain. The Core switched away from the method by implementing own traversers that match the specific use cases. Method cleanFlexFormXML() is an example of such an implementation. Note FlexForms are not recursive since section containers can not be nested since TYPO3 v8 anymore. The Core thus uses some nested foreach loops instead of a recursive approach.