Is it possible for me to edit Conversation (Inbox) messages?*

DavidColburn

I looked in the wiki, the Community, and did a search ... nada.

Did I break something along the way or is the edit feature not available to change a post just made in Inbox - Conversation, please?

Version 2.0.18.8

Shadowdare

The feature to edit a conversation message is not available.

DavidColburn

:-(

Silver lining is that I didn't break it or miss finding it!

Any word if that will be added in the pending new version?

Thanks!

Shadowdare

I've heard no news of it, but it probably doesn't exist because of the nature of private messages.

DavidColburn

It doesn't seem hard to test that the one trying to edit is the one who originally posted.

I have observed that access to edit your post in some places is time-limited (e.g. 5 minutes).

Shadowdare

@DavidColburn said:
It doesn't seem hard to test that the one trying to edit is the one who originally posted.

You should make a plugin and release it when it's finished.

DavidColburn

Funny guy ... I'm lucky to remember where to find the right files to edit when I jump back into Vanilla from the 12 other unrelated projects going here ...

Thanks.

R_J

Whoa, I love that idea!

I think this feature would be used really often. It would only make sense to let unread PMs be editable. You could give unread PMs their own css class with the same plugin and if I remember it right, there's already a plugin that highlights unread PMs. I assume that this plugin would be the best start.
Form handling is something I've not yet understood so I cannot judge how complicate it would be.

I don't think I will have an opportunity to work on this, but maybe someone other wants to take the challenge? I believe it is a good job for a starter because you will not have many things to take care of if you can extend an existing form.

I keep watching this thread!

R_J

Well, the beginning was in fact easy, but I know much less about javascript than I know about php and that is really not enough to finish such a plugin.

At least I've started on it and maybe someone wants to take over? https://github.com/R-J/EditConversations

If somebody wants to have different styles for read and unread conversations, that's already working like a charm and I'm somewhat proud that it takes no extra db queries for it :-)

What's not working (and that's most of it although it looks nice to me already)

1. getting message content by ajax call
2. updating message back to db
3. recreate div from textbox after save

hgtonight

@R_J You get to use different delivery types!

Use something like below to access the basic view of a controller.

$.ajax({
  url: 'path/to/vanilla/application/controller/method/args',
  global: false,
  type: 'GET',
  data: 'DeliveryType=VIEW',
  dataType: 'json',
  success: function(Data) {
    console.log(Data);
  }
});

Note: Not all controllers return different things for different views.

R_J

Thanks for that, but to be honest: I don't understand two of your three sentences, although the code looks pretty self explanatory.

I've never done anything complicated with JS and I've taken a look at post.js from Garden because I wanted to mimic the behaviour of editing comments, but I couldn't understand it.
I've underestimated the work that creating that plugin would make and so I just postpone it. I've hardly understood what I'm doing when I write PHP and my goal is to become more fluent with writing PHP code first.

Nevertheless, I've invested some time in that plugin already and maybe there will be someone searching for "edit conversations", who sees my unfinished plugin and can benefit from it.

hgtonight

For information about delivery methods and types, check out /library/core/class.controller.php.

An excerpt:

/**
    * An enumerator indicating how the response should be delivered to the
    * output buffer. Options are:
    *    DELIVERY_METHOD_XHTML: page contents are delivered as normal.
    *    DELIVERY_METHOD_JSON: page contents and extra information delivered as JSON.
    * The default value is DELIVERY_METHOD_XHTML.
    *
    * @var string
    */
   protected $_DeliveryMethod;

   /**
    * An enumerator indicating what should be delivered to the screen. Options
    * are:
    *    DELIVERY_TYPE_ALL: The master view and everything in the requested asset.
    *    DELIVERY_TYPE_ASSET: Everything in the requested asset.
    *    DELIVERY_TYPE_VIEW: Only the requested view.
    *    DELIVERY_TYPE_BOOL: Deliver only the success status (or error) of the request
    *    DELIVERY_TYPE_NONE: Deliver nothing
    * The default value is DELIVERY_TYPE_ALL.
    *
    * @var string
    */
   protected $_DeliveryType;

The easiest example to demonstrate is visit /discussions, /discussions?DeliveryType=VIEW, /discussions?DeliveryMethod=JSON, and /discussions?DeliveryType=VIEW&DeliveryMethod=JSON in your browser and inspect what you see.

Controllers can (and most vanilla controllers do) render different output based on the delivery type and method selected. This allows access to most data through AJAX. And this support is in the core.

Linc

Editing conversations is like editing emails or text messages. It don't make a lick of sense.

R_J

@hgtonight: that seems to be quite useful and straightforward as far as I can judge and I have this discussion bookmarked. As soon as I haven't got to use google for every second line I try to code in JS, I might give this a second try. But I assume that this will not be in the near future...

@Lincoln: it might not make sense for you, but my girlfriend and I were using the same forum once and I'm convinced we're still a couple because we could change what we have written in the first run before the other has seen it ;-)
But you are surely right that this is nothing which belongs naturally to a conversation addon. IMHO it would be just a nice plugin and if it would exist it would be used, not because it is necessary but because it is comfortable.

peregrine

not editing conversation

I've never seen this mentioned before:

but a way to add a subject to the conversations

$Configuration['Conversations']['Subjects']['Visible'] = TRUE;