debugging problematic query triggered by category related plugin

codegrunt

Howdy. I am currently trying to create a custom skin for Vanilla that is closer in behaviour to a traditional forum (a la phpBB, vBulletin, etc.). Since I am new to Vanilla, I decided to try out the "Categories2DiscussionsMenu" module to see how it handles grabbing the master category list. After installing it nothing seemed to have changed. Looking at the source I see the following:

$Sender->CategoryModel = new CategoryModel(); $this->_CategoryData = $Sender->CategoryModel->GetFull();

I added a var_dump($this->_CategoryData) call to see what was returned and noticed that a bogus query was being generated:

select c.Name as `Name`, c.CategoryID as `CategoryID`, c.Description as `Description`, c.CountDiscussions as `CountDiscussions`, c.UrlCode as `UrlCode`, p.CategoryID as `ParentCategoryID`, p.Name as `ParentName` from GDN_Category c left join GDN_Category p on c.ParentCategoryID = p.CategoryID where c.AllowDiscussions = :cAllowDiscussions and 1 = 1 order by c.Sort asc

So the issue is that the CategoryModel object is somehow having its behaviour affected such that a garbage query is generated. I looked at class.CategoryModel.php and the query looks reasonable (and is used elsewhere) so I am a bit confused as to what is mangling the query.

One possibility would be the NamedParameter method in "class.sqldriver.php":

$NiceName = ':'.preg_replace('/([^\w\d_-])/', '', $Name);

My guess is that the problem is with how the query is built up in the MySQL class itself but I am hoping someone else has already cracked this nut. Any suggestions on how to track this down would be appreciated.

Cheers

PS: heads up to @oliverraduner who is the author of the actual plugin.

codegrunt

Just following up on this. The issue definitely appears to be that "c.AllowDiscussions" is getting treated as named parameter for a prepared statement by the SQL driver. So I am guessing that a query somewhere is passing the wrong value for the $SQL->Set() method or Vanilla is supposed to be using prepared statements here but the plugin is getting called before they are setup properly.

Any assistance appreciated.

Cheers

codegrunt

Ok, I just updated PHP from 5.3.1 to 5.3.5 and the content is being rendered so this looks like an oddity with my PHP install. Now I just need to sort out the CSS issue that stops the menu from displaying. . .