All releases happens one-per-month, with new features at each stable
release, you had complains so that stops, the next release will may not
be available on next month, but it will take longers, this release
should be the most iris stable version you can get now.
## 4.0.0-alpha.2 -> 4.0.0-alpha.3
**New**
A **Response Engine** gives you the freedom to create/change the
render/response writer for
- `context.JSON`
- `context.JSONP`
- `context.XML`
- `context.Text`
- `context.Markdown`
- `context.Data`
- `context.Render("my_custom_type",mystructOrData{},
iris.RenderOptions{"gzip":false,"charset":"UTF-8"})`
- `context.MarkdownString`
- `iris.ResponseString(...)`
**Fix**
- https://github.com/kataras/iris/issues/294
**Small changes**
- `iris.Config.Charset`, before alpha.3 was `iris.Config.Rest.Charset` &
`iris.Config.Render.Template.Charset`, but you can override it at
runtime by passinth a map `iris.RenderOptions` on the `context.Render`
call .
- `iris.Config.IsDevelopment` , before alpha.1 was
`iris.Config.Render.Template.IsDevelopment`
**Websockets changes**
No need to import the `github.com/kataras/iris/websocket` to use the
`Connection` iteral, the websocket moved inside `kataras/iris` , now all
exported variables' names have the prefix of `Websocket`, so the old
`websocket.Connection` is now `iris.WebsocketConnection`.
Generally, no other changes on the 'frontend API', for response engines
examples and how you can register your own to add more features on
existing response engines or replace them, look
[here](https://github.com/iris-contrib/response).
**BAD SIDE**: E-Book is still pointing on the v3 release, but will be
updated soon.
**Sessions were re-written **
- Developers can use more than one 'session database', at the same time,
to store the sessions
- Easy to develop a custom session database (only two functions are
required (Load & Update)), [learn
more](https://github.com/iris-contrib/sessiondb/blob/master/redis/database.go)
- Session databases are located
[here](https://github.com/iris-contrib/sessiondb), contributions are
welcome
- The only frontend deleted 'thing' is the: **config.Sessions.Provider**
- No need to register a database, the sessions works out-of-the-box
- No frontend/API changes except the
`context.Session().Set/Delete/Clear`, they doesn't return errors
anymore, btw they (errors) were always nil :)
- Examples (master branch) were updated.
```sh
$ go get github.com/iris-contrib/sessiondb/$DATABASE
```
```go
db := $DATABASE.New(configurationHere{})
iris.UseSessionDB(db)
```
> Note: Book is not updated yet, examples are up-to-date as always.
Gerasimos Maropoulos