Deprecation: #86163 - TCA type="user" without renderType

See forge#86163

Description

The following TCA properties on type="user" config types have been marked as deprecated and should not be used any longer:

  • userFunc
  • parameters
  • noTableWrapping

Impact

This especially means that userFunc should not be used any longer on TCA fields registered as config type user. Those can be substituted with a custom renderType since TYPO3 v7. See example below for more details.

Affected Installations

Instances are affected if an extension registers a type=user TCA config type with a custom userFunc. If a field uses the userFunc property, a PHP E_USER_DEPRECATED error is triggered during rendering.

Migration

userFunc implementations can switch to use a custom renderType as outlined in the FormEngine documentation. The TYPO3 core did that for example with the is_public field of table sys_file_storge in patch 58141.

To switch from a userFunc implementation to a renderType, an extension typically has to register an own element node in ext_localconf.php. Then change the user function to a class that extends AbstractFormElement where method render() returns an array as defined in helper method initializeResultArray. The HTML created by the former user function should be returned in $resultArray['html'], parameters like the tableName can be found in $this->data.

Note the renderType variant can additionally load custom JavaScript and CSS using further parts of the result array, typically requireJsModules and stylesheetFiles. Arguments to the element can be defined by using any property within the config section, it is up to the specific renderType to do this, using parameters as property key is probably a good idea, though.

As example, imagine a TCA user element has been defined like this in the columns section:

'myMapElement' = [
    'label' => 'My map element'
    'config' => [
        'type' => 'user',
        'userFunc' => 'Vendor\Extension\Tca\UserFunc\MyMap->render',
        'parameters' => [
            'useOpenStreetMap' => true,
        ],
    ],
],
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This should be adapted to a registered node element class:

// Register a node in ext_localconf.php
$GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']['SYS']['formEngine']['nodeRegistry'][<unix timestamp of "now">] = [
    'nodeName' => 'customMapElement',
    'priority' => 40,
    'class' => \Vendor\Extension\Form\Element\CustomMapElement::class,
];
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With a TCA registration like this to delegate the element rendering to the registered class:

'myMapElement' = [
    'label' => 'My map element'
    'config' => [
        'type' => 'user',
        'renderType' => 'customMapElement',
        'parameters' => [
            'useOpenStreetMap' => true,
        ],
    ],
],
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And a class implementation that extends AbstractFormElement:

<?php
declare(strict_types = 1);
namespace Vendor\Extension\Form\Element;

use TYPO3\CMS\Backend\Form\Element\AbstractFormElement;

class CustomMapElement extends AbstractFormElement
{
    public function render()
    {
        // Custom TCA properties and other data can be found in $this->data, for example the above
        // parameters are available in $this->data['parameterArray']['fieldConf']['config']['parameters']
        $result = $this->initializeResultArray();
        $result['html'] = 'my map content';
        return $result;
    }
}
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