# 3.0.0 / 2020-07-27
## Changelog Summary
The CTFd v3 Changelog represents the changes from v2.5.0 to v3. It is a summarized version of the changes that occured in all CTFd v3 beta/alpha releases.
CTFd v3 contains some breaking changes but many plugins remain compatible. Themes will need some minor changes to be compatible with v3.
These changes are made with great consideration to existing installations and for the health of the overall CTFd project. If you rely on specific behavior, you can always download the last CTFd v2 release on Github. Official plugin/theme updates will be sent to the email addresses on file.
The major changes in CTFd v3 are as follows with the detailed changelog beneath:
- ### Server Side HTML/Markdown Rendering
HTML rendering in some cases (challenge description rendering, hint content rendering) has been moved to the server side. Previously it was rendered by the browser but this led to a lot of duplicated behavior and complexity in some plugins. Rendering that HTML content on the server allows CTFd to take more advantage of theme content and reduce duplicated code across themes.
In addition, HTML sanitization can be enabled on the CTFd installation to prevent the injection of malicious scripts in HTML content.
- ### CommonMark
CTFd now uses [CommonMark](https://commonmark.org/) for HTML/Markdown rendering. This leads to much more consistent rendering of HTML/Markdown content.
In some cases, this can break your HTML output. You can use our [development testing script](https://gist.github.com/ColdHeat/085c47359ab86c18864135a198cbe505) to check if your HTML output will change and correct it accordingly.
- ### Forms, Nonces, Sessions
CTFd no longer directly injects values into the global session object for a theme. You may have used this as `{{ nonce }}` or `{{ id }}`. Instead these values should be accessed via the `Session` global as so: `{{ Session.nonce }}`.
All of the public facing forms in CTFd have been converted to form globals with WTForms. You can access them via the `Form` global in Jinja. For example, `{{ Forms.auth.LoginForm() }}`. A `{{ form.nonce() }}` function is available on all forms for easier access to the CSRF nonce as well.
Old forms will still work if the nonce used in the form is updated to `{{ Session.nonce }}`.
Values provided by configuration and plugins can now be accessed via the `Configs` and `Plugins` globals. For example `{{ Configs.ctf_name }}` and `{{ Plugins.scripts }}`. See the `base.html` file of the core theme to get an idea of how to use these values.
- ### Challenge Type Plugin Enhancements
Challenge type plugins now have better re-useability with the rest of CTFd. Plugin code no longer needs to copy unchanged methods over from the base challenge plugin classes.
In addition, challenge HTML is now rendered on the server side using a new `challenge.html` file provided by the current theme. This means that the theme effectively controls how a challenge should look overall, but the challenge plugin controls the overall content.
- ### Python 3
CTFd v3 is Python 3 only.
- ### Docker image based on Debian
The Docker image used in CTFd is now based on Debian.
- ### config.ini
Instead of editting `config.py` directly, it's now a better idea to edit `config.ini` or provide your configuration via environment variables
## Detailed Changelog
**General**
- CTFd is now Python 3 only
- Render markdown with the CommonMark spec provided by `cmarkgfm`
- HTML/Markdown content is now rendered on the server side in most cases.
- This includes challenge descriptions, hint content, and page content
- Ability to render markdown stripped of any malicious JavaScript or HTML.
- Controlled via the `HTML_SANITIZATION` server side configuration value
- Inject `Config`, `User`, `Team`, `Session`, and `Plugin` globals into Jinja
- User sessions no longer store any user-specific attributes.
- Sessions only store the user's ID, CSRF nonce, and an hmac of the user's password
- This allows for session invalidation on password changes
- The user facing side of CTFd now has user and team searching
- Accept additional profile fields during registration (affiliation, website, country)
- This does not add additional inputs. Themes or additional JavaScript can add the form inputs.
**Admin Panel**
- Use EasyMDE as an improved description/text editor for Markdown enabled fields.
- Media Library button now integrated into EasyMDE enabled fields
- VueJS now used as the underlying implementation for the Media Library
- Fix setting theme color in Admin Panel
- Green outline border has been removed from the Admin Panel
- GeoIP support now available for converting IP addresses to guessed countries
- Redesign the challenge creation form to use a radio button with challenge type selection instead of a select input
**API**
- Significant overhauls in API documentation provided by Swagger UI and Swagger json
- Make almost all API endpoints provide filtering and searching capabilities
- Change `GET /api/v1/config/<config_key>` to return structured data according to ConfigSchema
- Admins can no longer ban themselves through `PATCH /api/v1/users/[user_id]`
- Add `html` item for `GET /api/v1/hints/[hint_id]` which contains the rendered HTML of the Hint content
- Remove `content` from `GET /api/v1/hints`
**Themes**
- Themes now have access to the `Configs` global which provides wrapped access to `get_config`.
- For example, `{{ Configs.ctf_name }}` instead of `get_ctf_name()` or `get_config('ctf_name')`
- Themes must now specify a `challenge.html` which control how a challenge should look.
- The main library for charts has been changed from Plotly to Apache ECharts.
- Forms have been moved into wtforms for easier form rendering inside of Jinja.
- From Jinja you can access forms via the Forms global i.e. `{{ Forms }}`
- This allows theme developers to more easily re-use a form without having to copy-paste HTML.
- Themes can now provide a theme settings JSON blob which can be injected into the theme with `{{ Configs.theme_settings }}`
- Core theme now includes the challenge ID in location hash identifiers to always refer the right challenge despite duplicate names
- Spinner centering has been switched from a hard coded margin in CSS to flexbox CSS classes from Bootstrap
**Plugins**
- Challenge plugins have changed in structure to better allow integration with themes and prevent obtrusive Javascript/XSS.
- Challenge rendering now uses `challenge.html` from the provided theme.
- Accessing the challenge view content is now provided by `/api/v1/challenges/<challenge_id>` in the `view` section. This allows for HTML to be properly sanitized and rendered by the server allowing CTFd to remove client side Jinja rendering.
- `challenge.html` now specifies what's required and what's rendered by the theme. This allows the challenge plugin to avoid having to deal with aspects of the challenge besides the description and input.
- A more complete migration guide will be provided when CTFd v3 leaves beta
- Display current attempt count in challenge view when max attempts is enabled
- `get_standings()`, `get_team_stanadings()`, `get_user_standings()` now has a fields keyword argument that allows for specificying additional fields that SQLAlchemy should return when building the response set.
- Useful for gathering additional data when building scoreboard pages
- Flags can now control the message that is shown to the user by raising `FlagException`
- Fix `override_template()` functionality
**Deployment**
- Enable SQLAlchemy's `pool_pre_ping` by default to reduce the likelihood of database connection issues
- Mailgun email settings are now deprecated. Admins should move to SMTP email settings instead.
- Postgres is now considered a second class citizen in CTFd. It is tested against but not a main database backend. If you use Postgres, you are entirely on your own with regards to supporting CTFd.
- Docker image now uses Debian instead of Alpine. See https://github.com/CTFd/CTFd/issues/1215 for rationale.
- `docker-compose.yml` now uses a non-root user to connect to MySQL/MariaDB
- `config.py` should no longer be editting for configuration, instead edit `config.ini` or the environment variables in `docker-compose.yml`
**Miscellaneous**
- Fix an issue where email sending would be broken if the CTF name contained a colon
- Lint Markdown files with Prettier
- Lint Dockerfile and docker-compose.yml in Github Actions
- Lint JavaScript files with eslint
- Certain static strings have been converted into Enums for better re-useability throughout the code base
- Switch to using Github Actions for testing and linting
- Better handling of missing challenge types. Missing challenge types no longer bring down all other challenges.
- Documentation has been seperated out into a seperate repo (https://github.com/CTFd/docs).
- Documentation hosting has moved from ReadTheDocs to Netlify
- Any links in the codebase to help.ctfd.io have been changed to docs.ctfd.io.
* Move server setting documentation from `config.py` to `config.ini`
* Add support for adding additional config values to `config.ini`
* Rename `CTFd.config.ServerConfig` to `CTFd.config.Config` so that we can instantiate an actual `Config` class and add attributes to it.
* Closes#565
# 3.0.0b3 / 2020-07-22
**General**
- Render Hint content on the server side and provide it in the Hint API response
- In a sense this would deprecate the `content` field but it's left in for backwards compatability
**API**
- Add `html` item for `GET /api/v1/hints/[hint_id]` which contains the rendered HTML of the Hint content
- Remove `content` from `GET /api/v1/hints`
**Admin Panel**
- Fix an issue where an admin couldn't submit more than once on a challenge preview
- Fix an issue where the theme settings editor wouldn't load if the theme settings JSON was malformed
**Miscellaneous**
- Fix an issue where email sending would be broken if the CTF name contained a colon
Alpha release of CTFd v3.
# 3.0.0a1 / 2020-07-01
**General**
- CTFd is now Python 3 only
- Render markdown with the CommonMark spec provided by `cmarkgfm`
- Render markdown stripped of any malicious JavaScript or HTML.
- This is a significant change from previous versions of CTFd where any HTML content from an admin was considered safe.
- Inject `Config`, `User`, `Team`, `Session`, and `Plugin` globals into Jinja
- User sessions no longer store any user-specific attributes.
- Sessions only store the user's ID, CSRF nonce, and an hmac of the user's password
- This allows for session invalidation on password changes
- The user facing side of CTFd now has user and team searching
- GeoIP support now available for converting IP addresses to guessed countries
**Admin Panel**
- Use EasyMDE as an improved description/text editor for Markdown enabled fields.
- Media Library button now integrated into EasyMDE enabled fields
- VueJS now used as the underlying implementation for the Media Library
- Fix setting theme color in Admin Panel
- Green outline border has been removed from the Admin Panel
**API**
- Significant overhauls in API documentation provided by Swagger UI and Swagger json
- Make almost all API endpoints provide filtering and searching capabilities
- Change `GET /api/v1/config/<config_key>` to return structured data according to ConfigSchema
**Themes**
- Themes now have access to the `Configs` global which provides wrapped access to `get_config`.
- For example, `{{ Configs.ctf_name }}` instead of `get_ctf_name()` or `get_config('ctf_name')`
- Themes must now specify a `challenge.html` which control how a challenge should look.
- The main library for charts has been changed from Plotly to Apache ECharts.
- Forms have been moved into wtforms for easier form rendering inside of Jinja.
- From Jinja you can access forms via the Forms global i.e. `{{ Forms }}`
- This allows theme developers to more easily re-use a form without having to copy-paste HTML.
- Themes can now provide a theme settings JSON blob which can be injected into the theme with `{{ Configs.theme_settings }}`
- Core theme now includes the challenge ID in location hash identifiers to always refer the right challenge despite duplicate names
**Plugins**
- Challenge plugins have changed in structure to better allow integration with themes and prevent obtrusive Javascript/XSS.
- Challenge rendering now uses `challenge.html` from the provided theme.
- Accessing the challenge view content is now provided by `/api/v1/challenges/<challenge_id>` in the `view` section. This allows for HTML to be properly sanitized and rendered by the server allowing CTFd to remove client side Jinja rendering.
- `challenge.html` now specifies what's required and what's rendered by the theme. This allows the challenge plugin to avoid having to deal with aspects of the challenge besides the description and input.
- A more complete migration guide will be provided when CTFd v3 leaves beta
- Display current attempt count in challenge view when max attempts is enabled
- `get_standings()`, `get_team_stanadings()`, `get_user_standings()` now has a fields keyword argument that allows for specificying additional fields that SQLAlchemy should return when building the response set.
- Useful for gathering additional data when building scoreboard pages
- Flags can now control the message that is shown to the user by raising `FlagException`
- Fix `override_template()` functionality
**Deployment**
- Enable SQLAlchemy's `pool_pre_ping` by default to reduce the likelihood of database connection issues
- Mailgun email settings are now deprecated. Admins should move to SMTP email settings instead.
- Postgres is now considered a second class citizen in CTFd. It is tested against but not a main database backend. If you use Postgres, you are entirely on your own with regards to supporting CTFd.
- Docker image now uses Debian instead of Alpine. See https://github.com/CTFd/CTFd/issues/1215 for rationale.
- `docker-compose.yml` now uses a non-root user to connect to MySQL/MariaDB
- `config.py` should no longer be editting for configuration, instead edit `config.ini` or the environment variables in `docker-compose.yml`
Drop the default worker count in `docker-entrypoint.sh` because the default memory usage was higher than it needed to be. If you need more workers you can still increase the values and set a `SECRET_KEY` as before.
* Update CHANGELOG
* Update README
* Upgrade migration script to port visibility settings
* Add message about visibility settings and port over visibility settings
* Close#758
* Add tests for dynamic value challenges
* Fix user and admin panel user/team graphs
* Closes#682
* Unify login and logout under specific functions
* Closes#659
* Rename Challenges.hidden to Challenges.state
* Start to clean up API and front end integration starting with profile updating
* Slightly cleaner code
* Clean API to respond with success, data, and status codes
* Simpler COUNTRIES_LIST and update profile to use COUNTRIES_LIST
* Lookup country code in users page. Update front end calls to get API data properly
* Fix some API endpoints and fix JS to process new responses
* Update config.py to support new values
* Closes#635
* Update some code to handle user types, add email domain whitelisting
* Write a logging wrapper
* Use logging wrapper for submissions
* Close#656
* Break up config.html to make it easier to maintain
* Fix logging, domain_whitelist, and config
* Improving views.py, starting to add Announcements
* Starting announcements front end
* Make it easier to see large images, clean up some more REST API differences
* Closes#668
* Update Proxyfix config to REVERSE_PROXY
* Add announcements front end
* Move creation/edit modals into seperate files. Start moving user updating into their admin profile pages.
* Update font-awesome to 5.4.1
* Switch to user-edit icon
* Update the update_check function to send up more anonymous data for statistics purposes.
* Start work on #640
* Add the user action modals and update API to fix responses
* Fix admin teams page
* Add challenge requirements
* Implement anonymous locked challenges
* Team editting from admin panel
* Switch from simple cache to filesystem cache
* Implements a Cache backed server side session (#658) and fixes Users editting endpoint
* Add our messaging for docs
* Closes#700
* Remove invalid import
* Move challenge enditting around a whole lot and probably break a bunch of things
* Show challenge names in prerequisites instead of challenge IDs
* Closes#661
* Change user templates to use url_for
* Remove extra function
* Rewrite admin panel to use url_for
* Fix events to work under subdirectories
* Start cleaning up config panel
* Fix filesystem uploader; deprecate view_challenges_unregistered, view_scoreboard_if_authed, prevent_registration, view_after_ctf; implement new visibility decorators
* Remove workshop mode, fix some glitches with the new visibility settings
* Fix ctf_logo on core theme
* Fix setup errors
* Removing default from get_config b/c of memoization issues and getting some tests working
* Relax email regex validation rule (#693)
* Update to pycodestyle and fix new lint errors
* Add a ctf_id to update_check
* Change challenge plugin layout. Rename mailgun configs to be more descriptive (Closes#702)
* Detect if people try to set routes with '/' to simplify #690
* Closes#690
* Clean up some code
* Clean up challenge submit to rate limit
* Fix js version compatability issue
* Close some TODOs
* Hide challenges if not authenticated
* Make set_config reset the cache for those config values
* Return 404 on empty challenges for /api/v1/<challenge_id>/solves
* Fix setting boolean configs
* Properly change account config settings
* Move datetimes to isoformat (Closes#703)
* Remove all .isoformat() calls because it isn't UTC aware (ends in Z). Switch to isoformat function & filter
* Make /v1/submissions endpoint work for admin submission creation
* Make oauth_id unique for Users and Teams
* Move challenge submission endpoint and implement mark solved. Fix some isoformat issues.
* Only show team's missing challenges if in team mode
* Adding support for Hints & Unlocks
* Update challenge submission url
* Fix encoding functions in Python3
* Fix hexencode in Python3
* Added functional tests for challenges API for non-admin users (#705)
* Set hint default type to be standard
* Fix some JS issues. Closes#704
* Implement session.regenerate on top of the CachingSessionInterface
* Challenge challenge attempt responses from numbers to strings
* Fix password updating for UserSchema
* Remove leftover challenge submission code
* Remove old migrations :(, resolve challenge requirements not loading correctly, move migration functions
* Added functional tests for challenges/hints/admin API (#710)
* Fix helpers and re-add JSONLite
* Install MySQL 5.7
* Try more mysql
* Update password for mysql
* Fixing issuse in Users.get_solves
* Add new import/export code
* Switch to CTFdSerializer for Python 3
* Re-implement import exports and add a very flaky test
* Redesign submissions API response
* Get export to roundtrip in tests
* Int score b/c Decimal is not JSON serializeable
* Remove unused route methods
* Fix POST /api/v1/configs and start adding admin tests
* Add user_id and team_id to top/10
* Fix admin creating Teams
* Fix Team website validation
* Change admins_only to reply with a 403 if the request is JSON
* Organize admin tests and fix authed_only to return 403 on unauthed
* Adding check_account_visibility, check_score_visibility for /api/v1/teams/<team_id>/(solves|awards|fails)
* Fix teams/me endpoints again
* Fix users/me endpoints to return 403 if unauthed
* Fix Python 3 config API
* Add fetch and promise polyfills. (#712)
* Add exec to docker-entrypoint.sh (#713)
* Display import_ctf Exceptions via repr (#651)
- Wraps exceptions on `/admin/import` returned to users in a `repr()`, making debugging easier.
* Add error messages to the admin panel, fix schemas for users, start working on UI for imports/exports
* Make unauthed challenge submission attempt return 403 instead of 302, Fix user deletion, fix associated tests, remove TODOs
* Remove old means of creating solves
* Remove most of the content from teams.js and users.js
* Remove extra code from /challenges.js
* Fix POST'ing & PATCH'ing pages
* Make (users|teams)/fails return only count to users. Fix public score graphs to factor in awards
* Fix admin side scoregraphs. Fix Awardschemas for admins
* Add requirements to db migration
* Adding some team decorators
* Fix require_team_mode decorator
* Make verified emails decorator return 403 on JSON requests
* Redo initial revision
* Add SQLiteJSON back
* Adding ratelimit to /redirect and removing POST from /oauth
* Fix PATCH tags
* Actually fix PATCH tags
* Simplify 500.html
* Added tests for challenges, awards, files, flags, hints ... (#723)
* Added tests for challenges, awards, files, flags, hints, notifications, pages, submissions, tags
* Fix user data validation functions, Fix hidden challenges and include test
* Add a locked state to attempt
* OAuth teams get verified, use logging functions in redirect route
* Removing extra print call
* Update requirements.txt
* Fix possible AttributeError
* Start work on #716
* Closes#717
* Fix issue patching teams
* Rename .j2 to .html, implement preview for challenges if admin
* Move admin/challenge.html to admin/challenges/challenge.html
* Remove old modals
* Add Reset CTF button (#639)
* Add Reset link to config.html
* Delete Tracking
* files handler should return a 404 on files it cant find
* Denote official teams (#729), make scoregraph fill to zero
* Remove old javascript files, make some challenge elements refresh by reloading
* Fix team editting modals to work more reliably
* Fix rendering of CTF paused
* Remove hide_scores funtion and roll it into scores visibility
* Log to stdout/stderr by default (#719)
* Fix user searching
* Remove searching for users/teams by country
* Add badges to admin team and user pages, implement user banning (#643)
* Remove shell.py, clean up admin team.html, add tests for banned users, teams
* Start cleaning up dynamic_challenges to meet new challenge type plugin format
* Remove POST method from teams.public
* Add credentials: 'same-origin' to all fetch calls (#734)
* Add challenge preview, add challenge deletion, fix file deletions when deleting challenges
* Fix imports UI (#735)
* Show prerequisites before adding a blank one (#738), Refresh all challenges after a submission (#739)
* Admins can see hidden challenges
* Fix some UI elements, fix loading location hash, set version to be 2.0.0
* Clean up some challenge plugin pages
* Add default for flag type
* Fix Python3 bytes/str issues
* Add in MLC urls and support user mode for oauth
* Fix seeing user graphs when scores are hidden, clean up setup.html, add links to MLC oauth
* Add state parameter support
* Use URLSafeTimedSerializer wrapper for sending token based emails
* setting APPLICATION_ROOT from env var (#732)
* Rearrange config.py and update README
* Updating README
* Mark 1.2.0.
* Update CHANGELOG.
* Add `window.challenge.data` object.
* Don't raise a 500 when an endpoint can't be found but was POST'ed too. Mostly from scanners...
* Add test for not found endpoints.
* Fixing issue with clearing logo on config update.
* Truncate scoreboard team name to 50 characters.
