The Latest Release plugin

Shown in the plugin manager as: Content - Akeeba Release System Latest Releases

Many times you want to include the latest published version number of a specific category in your content articles. Surely, you can just type it out. This works perfectly when you only do that in one or two places, provided that you remember to edit this information every single time you make a new release. However, after a while, it becomes too cumbersome. Especially when this information is present in more than two places and/or you have more than a handful of categories. This is where this plugin comes in to save your day. It allows you to automatically display the version number and URL of the latest release. Moreover, it allows you to link directly to specific items in the latest release of a category.

Showing the latest release version number

Syntax: {arslatest release Category Name}

where Category Name is the name of the Akeeba Release System category (not the alias, the title). This will return the latest release's version number, e.g. 1.0.

Creating links to the latest release

Syntax: {arslatest release_link Category Name}

where Category Name is the name of the Akeeba Release System category (not the alias, the title). This will return the URL to latest release's version number, e.g. 1.0. Please note that this is the URL, not a link! If you want to use it as a link you will need something like this:

<a href="{arslatest release_link Category Name}">
    Your link text
\</a>

You can combine it with the version number syntax for something like this:

<a href="{arslatest release_link Category Name}">
    My category, version {arslatest release Category Name}
</a>

Practical use case: This can be used in a custom HTML file for displaying the Categories (Repository) page of ARS in a fully customised HTML structure, like we do on our own site. This snippet is what you'd use for the header of a software category, displaying the latest version and linking it to its download items.

Creating links to specific items in the latest release

Syntax: {arslatest item_link "pattern" Category Name}

where Category Name is the name of the Akeeba Release System category and pattern is a file naming pattern, enclosed in double quotes. For example, in order to create a link to a download item for a file whose names begins with com_foobar and ends in .zip in the Foobar category you would have to do {arslatest item_link 'com_foobar*.zip' Foobar}

Please note that this is the URL, not a link! If you want to use it as a link you will need something like this:

<a href="{arslatest item_link 'com_foobar*.zip' Foobar}">
    Download latest version
</a>

or combine it with the version number syntax to have something even more useful:

<a href="{arslatest item_link 'com_foobar*.zip' Foobar}">
    Download Foobar version {arslatest release Foobar}
</a>

Practical use case: This can be used in a custom HTML file for displaying the Categories (Repository) page of ARS in a fully customised HTML structure, like we do on our own site. This snippet is what you'd use for download buttons under each software's header.

Creating links to specific items by means of the update stream ID

Syntax: {arslatest stream_link Stream ID}

where Stream ID is the numeric ID of an update stream, as shown in the leftmost column of the Update Streams page.

Please note that this is the URL, not a link! If you want to use it as a link you will need something like this:

<a href="{arslatest stream_link 123}">
    Download latest version
</a>

or combine it with the version number syntax to have something even more useful:

<a href="{arslatest stream_link 123}">
    Download Foobar version {arslatest release Foobar}
</a>

Practical use case: This can be used in a custom HTML file for displaying the Categories (Repository) page of ARS in a fully customised HTML structure, like we do on our own site. This snippet is what you'd use for download buttons under each software's header. This is a more elegant form of the previous practical use case which doesn't hinge on your packages' names following the same format forever and ever.