Trackserver v4.0 released

Posted on: Thursday 22 February 2018 /
Categories: GPS and mapping, Nerd Stuff, Programming, Trackserver

After another year of slow development, Trackserver v4.0 was released today. If you don’t know what trackserver is, you can read about it on its dedicated page on this website.

I will update this post later with some more in-depth information and some nice screenshots. For now, I’m afraid I will have to keep it down to the changelog, which you can find below. Where v3.0 was a big update on the front-end, the changes in v4.0 are much more in the back-end. Most of the work has been done in the WordPress admin, a little work was done in client / protocol support for live tracking (geofencing!) and a few minor improvements on the presentation side. Only one new shortcode parameter this time, and no real changes to existing ones.

Version 4.0 is the first version to feature a tangible contribution from someone other than myself. Thanks must go to Dainius Kaupaitis, who contributed a Lithuanian translation.

Here are the changes, plain and simple:

Added

  • A track editor in the WP admin, based on Leaflet.Editable. It allows you to move and delete track points and split tracks.
  • Bulk action for viewing multiple tracks at once in the admin. Editing them also works.
  • Geofencing support, allowing you to hide or drop location updates within certain areas.
  • A proxy for external KML and GPX tracks, to work around CORS restrictions.
  • ‘maxage’ shortcode parameter to impose time-based limit on live tracks.
  • OwnTracks HTTP support, locations request handling only for now.
  • Bulk action for downloading tracks as GPX.
  • A {distance} tag for infobar template, for total track distance in meters.
  • Information about live tracking URLs and howto’s for mobile apps on the user’s Trackserver profile.
  • Information on how to use live tracking in OsmAnd.
  • Lithuanian translation, thanks to Dainius Kaupaitis.
  • PHP coding style checks and automated testing with TravisCI.

Changed

  • Make the ‘infobar’ shortcode attribute accept a string, to override the template set in the user profile.
  • Show a popup on the map with an internationalized message when there are no tracks to display.
  • When a (live) track that is currently shown on the map is no longer present in the server response, show a nice popup, suggesting a page reload.
  • Limit the TrackMe ‘gettriplist’ command to the 25 latest tracks, serve them in reverse order.
  • Increase WP-admin ‘View track’ modal window size to 1024×768.
  • Updated Polyline encoder from Eric McConville to v1.3.
  • Updated Leaflet to version 1.3.1.
  • Updated Leaflet-fullscreen to version 1.0.2.

Fixed

  • In JavaScript, store track information from the server more reliably.
  • Improve HTTP responses around authentication failure.
  • Recalculate the total track distance after merging multiple tracks.
  • Easier access to Leaflet map object from 3rd party JavaScript (issue #9).
  • Handle localized decimal numbers from SendLocation (issue #12).
  • Some minor JavaScript and PHP issues.
  • Many many many PHP coding style fixes.