Making a custom error if a condition is met before submitting a thread?

Chizbang · February 2014

Hi!
I am totally new to Vanilla Forums and im moving from MyBB. I want to make a plugin (Which I have half done in MyBB) which allows you to set a bounty for your question which gets taken out your wallet (which is something else il be developing for it). What I need to do is, make sure the user has enough credits to set a bounty. So before the thread is submitted, I need to do a check to see if the user has enough credits to set that much bounty, if so, continue. If not, send the user back and tell them to set a lower bounty.

Im capible of doing all of that in PHP, I just need to know what I would need to do to stop a thread from being submitted.
Any ideas on what hook id need to use and how id stop the thread submission?

hgtonight · February 2014

Welcome to the community!

You need to hook into the discussion model and run your validation code before discussion save.

Something like this will get you started:

public function DiscussionModel_BeforeSaveDiscussion_Handler($Sender) {
  // Validation code here

  // If validation fails, die with an error message
  die('Error message here');
}

R_J · February 2014

If you have code that would make up a plugin for MyBB, you do not benefit from Garden, the framework that Vanilla is based on. I do not know how you are storing the credit info but if you have created a simple table UserID|CreditAmount you could benefit from the framework a lot.
Simply add something like that to your code and you have the credit amount always at hand, because that info will be automagically available with the user object as $User->Credit:

public function Setup() {
      $Structure->Table('User')
         ->Column('Credit', 'int', 0)
         ->Set(FALSE, FALSE);

But maybe you already did it that way or your plugin needs a one-to-many relation between user and credit, then simply forget about it

Nevertheless I would advice you to look at plugins that try to achieve similar things you want to achieve and learn from them. Maybe Karma is a good plugin to look at

x00 · February 2014

@hgtonight said:
Welcome to the community!

You need to hook into the discussion model and run your validation code before discussion save.

Something like this will get you started:
public function DiscussionModel_BeforeSaveDiscussion_Handler($Sender) {
  // Validation code here

  // If validation fails, die with an error message
  die('Error message here');
}

Or

public function DiscussionModel_BeforeSaveDiscussion_Handler($Sender, $Args) {

    $Bounty = GetValueR('FormPostValues.Bounty',$Args);

   // Format and validate Bounty

   // Check available funds
   if($this->AvailableCredits<$Bounty)
       $Sender->Validation->AddValidationResult('Bounty',T('YourPlugin.LackAvailableFunds','You don\'t have enough available funds to set this bounty '));
}

@Chizbang I take you are going to escrow the funds on save, otherwise checking whether there is funds coun be moot. Especially if someone tries to break it.

You need a transactional system strictly speaking. So a bounty is held until that one discussion is posted, and no other discussion can be posted until either the transaction is canceled, or it is placed and the funds secure.

Definitely worth reading up on transactional systems.

Another way is to 'purchase' the bounty before hand. That is what I have done with purchase anonymous posts. It is a type of discussion that either available or not.

R_J · February 2014

@x00 said:
That is what I have done with purchase anonymous posts.

Sounds like a funny feature! Which plugin offers something like that?

Chizbang · February 2014

Thanks both! That should work swell.
Il update you on how I get along.

hgtonight · February 2014

@x00 good call on $Sender->Validation->AddValidationResult();

Looks like DiscussionPolls needs some polishing.

Making a custom error if a condition is met before submitting a thread?

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