Just display discussions

h4xnoodle

I'm doing a vanilla install (ps love the script :D) for a friend and I need to just display the discussions and not the header or the sidebar etc. Just the comments. Is there anyway to just include it in? Or just access one page through an iframe (ew) ? Thanks.

Bergamot

There's a plugin to temporarily hide the sidebar, but I don't think that's what you want. How would people navigate?

h4xnoodle

Well, what I want to do is just display the most recent discussions in an iframe on the main layout. Then, if the user clicks a discussion, they will be taken to the full-blown layout of the forums. It's just so people can see the more recent forum posts.

Bergamot

If your main page has a way to show RSS feeds, that works pretty well.

h4xnoodle

Hm... Wouldn't it just be easier to include a file from somewhere?

Bergamot

Given the way Vanilla is constructed, it's not very easy to hack chunks out of it without a really good idea of how it's put together.

h4xnoodle

As mentioned earlier, where is this plugin to hide the sidebar?

Bergamot

I'm pretty sure it's one of the ones that comes with 0.9.2

Minisweeper

Yeah. It's called the panelhider. I'm not sure if its available with 0.9.2.6...cant remember if he took it out for 0.9.3 or before. Seriously though RSS would be your easiest choice; alternatively you could just write a query to pull the latest discussion info from your database and display it on your homepage since you'll have DB access. That seems to have been the choice made by most people who wanted forum info outside the forum.

Mark

It sounds like what you really want is to write a query for the vanilla database and just display those records in your site. Do you have any programming experience at all?

We can tell you exactly what the query should be, but you really should know how to display the records yourself.

NickE

You're probably going to go for parsing your own feeds anyways, but if you felt like getting your hands a tad dirty for a gain in efficiency then you could use something along these lines. (include it then call GetRecentDiscussions([number to display [preview len]]))

<?php

$VanillaDir = './'; //(relative) path to your vanilla installation

include($VanillaDir.'appg/settings.php');
include_once(sgLIBRARY.'Vanilla.Discussion.class.php');
include_once(sgLIBRARY.'Vanilla.Comment.class.php');
include($VanillaDir.'appg/init_ajax.php');

function GetPreview($Text, $Len)
{
	if(strlen($Text) <= $Len) return $Text;
	
	//first check to see if we can seperate paragraphs
	for($i = $Len; $Text[$i] != "\n" && $Text[$i] != "\r" && $i > 0; $i--) ;
	if($i > 0) return substr($Text, 0, $i) . ' ...';
	
	//now try punctuation
	for($i = $Len; !ctype_punct($Text[$i]) && $i >= 0; $i--) ;
	if($i > 0) return substr($Text, 0, $i) . ' ...';
	
	//and lastly, any spaces
	for($i = $Len; !ctype_space($Text[$i]) && $i >= 0; $i--) ;
	if($i > 0) return substr($Text, 0, $i) . ' ...';
	
	//if none of the above, just return a substring
	return substr($Text, 0, $Len) . ' ...';
}

function GetRecentDiscussions($Number = 10, $Preview = 50)
{
	global $Context, $VanillaDir;
	
	$s = $Context->ObjectFactory->NewContextObject($Context, 'SqlBuilder');
	$s->SetMainTable('Discussion', 't');
	$s->AddSelect(array('DiscussionID', 'DateCreated', 'Name', 'AuthUserID', 'DateLastActive', 'LastUserID'), 't');
	
	$s->AddJoin('User', 'lu', 'UserID', 't', 'LastUserID', 'left join');
	$s->AddSelect('Name', 'lu', 'LastUserName');
	
	$s->AddJoin('User', 'u', 'UserID', 't', 'AuthUserID', 'left join');
	$s->AddSelect('Name', 'u', 'AuthUserName');
	
	$s->AddJoin('Comment', 'c', 'CommentID', 't', 'FirstCommentID', 'left join');
	$s->AddSelect('Body', 'c');
	
	$s->AddJoin('Category', 'cg', 'CategoryID', 't', 'CategoryID', 'left join');
	$s->AddSelect('CategoryID', 'cg');
	$s->AddSelect('Name', 'cg', 'Category');
	
	if($Context->Session->UserID > 0)
		$s->AddJoin('CategoryRoleBlock', 'crb', 'CategoryID and crb.RoleID = '.$Context->Session->User->RoleID, 't', 'CategoryID', 'left join');
	else
		$s->AddJoin('CategoryRoleBlock', 'crb', 'CategoryID and crb.RoleID = 1', 't', 'CategoryID', 'left join');
	
	$s->AddWhere('coalesce(crb.Blocked, 0)', '0', '=', 'and', '', 0, 0);
	$s->AddWhere('t.WhisperUserID', 0, '=', 'and', '', 1, 1);
	$s->AddWhere('t.WhisperUserID', 0, '=', 'or', '' , 0);
	$s->AddWhere('t.WhisperUserID', 'null', 'is', 'or', '' , 0);
	$s->EndWhereGroup();
	
	$s->AddOrderBy('DateLastActive', 't', 'desc');
	$s->AddLimit(0, $Number);
	
	$Data = $Context->Database->Select($Context, $s, 'Extension', 'GetRecentDiscussions', 'An error occurred while retrieving discussions.');
	
	while($Row = $Context->Database->GetRow($Data))
	{
		/*
			available indexes, for modification:
			CategoryID, Category, DiscussionID, Discussion, AuthUserID, AuthUserName, LastUserID, LastUserName, 
			Body, Name, DateCreated, DateLastActive
		*/
		echo('
			<dl class="DiscussionPreview">
				<dt><a href="'.$VanillaDir.'comments.php?DiscussionID='.$Row['DiscussionID'].'">'.FormatStringForDisplay($Row['Name']).'</a></dt>
				<dd class="Label">Category</dd>
				<dd class="Item"><a href="'.$VanillaDir.'?CategoryID='.$Row['CategoryID'].'">'.FormatStringForDisplay($Row['Category']).'</a></dd>
				<dd class="Label">Author</dd>
				<dd class="Item"><a href="'.$VanillaDir.'account.php?u='.$Row['AuthUserID'].'">'.FormatStringForDisplay($Row['AuthUserName']).'</a></dd>
				<dd class="Label">Last Active</dd>
				<dd class="Item">'.TimeDiff(UnixTimestamp($Row['DateLastActive']), mktime()).'</dd>
				<dd class="Label">Last Post By</dd>
				<dd class="Item"><a href="'.$VanillaDir.'account.php?u='.$Row['LastUserID'].'">'.FormatStringForDisplay($Row['LastUserName']).'</a></dd>
				<dd class="PreviewText">'.FormatStringForDisplay(GetPreview($Row['Body'], $Preview)).'</dd>
			</dl>');
	}
	
	return 0;
}

?>

And I can post the actual query in readible form as well if you want; couldn't include it in this post because of the character limit.

Neverender

would this still work..?

Lin0ventura

I'm looking for something like this for ages, but is isn't working porperly. He says it cant find the includes files, "but they are there" so i cant locate the problem. Is this stil working for the latest vanilla version?