System for embedding Phorum in other applications (early preview)

Re: System for embedding Phorum in other applications (early preview)

Skye N. — Tue, 04 May 2010 20:44:08 -0500

Looks like this should work!

     * [hook]
     *     end_output
     *
     * [description]
     *     This hook can be used for performing post output tasks.
     *     One of the things that you could use this for, is for
     *     reading in buffered output using ob_get_contents
     *     in case you started buffering using ob_start
     *     from the start_output hook.

I'll work on it tomorrow and let you know if it works =)

Skye

Re: Embed_phorum for Phorum 5.2

Skye N. — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:50:51 -0500

Quote
Maurice Makaay
Sorry, but there is no version for 5.2. I had it ready at one point in the past, but an unfortunate hard disk accident wiped the new code from the face of the earth. Since then I've been busy in other development tasks (both work and Phorum). I will redo the 5.2 version of the module, but I'm afraid that I cannot provide a time frame on this.

Oh no, that's unfortunate.

I'm working on 5.2 integration with my site right now.
I already have integration with external_authentication module working, so registration, authentication etc is already complete and handled by my custom CMS.

My first idea was to have a phorum plugin that uses PHP output buffering (ob_start/ob_end_clean) to capture all Phorum output, and then fill in the content-div in my site template with the output (after stripping any header/footer/page HTML from the Phorum template)

Does that sound like it might work?

- Skye

Re: Embed_phorum for Phorum 5.2

Joe Curia — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 06:29:29 -0500

Check out my External Authentication module with its Drupal plugin. You can further use my Generic Integration template (at least for ideas on how to edit template headers/footers for embedding).

Re: Embed_phorum for Phorum 5.2

Panu — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 06:16:02 -0500

I'm starting to integrate Phorum into Drupal and I have to decide if I try to make it run inside Drupal or just use Drupals authentication.

So what changes do the 5.2 templates require to make them embeddable? Would it be easier to modify the existing embedded templates for 5.2 or make the current 5.2 templates embedded?

But I may just run only the authentication part for now even though this could be a good starting point with the embedding business :)

Re: Embed_phorum for Phorum 5.2

Maurice Makaay — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 06:36:17 -0500

Sorry, but there is no version for 5.2. I had it ready at one point in the past, but an unfortunate hard disk accident wiped the new code from the face of the earth. Since then I've been busy in other development tasks (both work and Phorum). I will redo the 5.2 version of the module, but I'm afraid that I cannot provide a time frame on this.

Embed_phorum for Phorum 5.2

Kostyantyn.Bilous — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 04:22:18 -0500

Dear Maurice,

Could you please help me and answer the following question:
I use embed_phorum, but it seems that this module only works under Phorum 5.1 version (not 5.2).
So I have a question: do you a version of embed_phorum for Phorum 5.2?

Thank you.

Yours Sincerely, Kostyantyn.

Re: System for embedding Phorum in other applications (early preview)

Sergej — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 03:57:09 -0500

The horror!!

Re: System for embedding Phorum in other applications (early preview)

Thomas Seifert — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 03:29:50 -0500

No news for that.
AFAIK he worked on it while in the US but lost the code in a harddisk accident.

Re: System for embedding Phorum in other applications (early preview)

Sergej — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 03:26:42 -0500

Quote
Maurice Makaay
I'm working on that right now (good vacation time spending ;-) and I have some CMS systems downloaded on my laptop to test it. But not finished yet. Currently fighting a bit with Drupal and getting around to its module writing system to build a Phorum integration. I hope to finish a working setup during my flight back to the Netherlands.

If it's only for user integration and single sign on, you might also be able to take a different route. You could write a module that implements the "user_session_restore" hook, which is a really convenient hook for handling single sign on. The other thing to do would be keeping Phorum users in sync with the main system. If you search for "user_session_restore" in these forums, you'll be able to find some example implementations.

Maurice,

Any news on the Drupal? I started using it with Phorum and am looking for ways to embed it.

Re: System for embedding Phorum in other applications (early preview)

pookey — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 07:44:25 -0500

Quote
Maurice Makaay

We try to use trigger_error() for all errors in Phorum. Those errors could be caught by an exception handler. There might still be die() calls in there. If you find any that get in your way, then please tell us. We can change them to trigger_error(). Maybe a future idea for the embed_phorum mod could be to offer such an error handler and a callback method. I'll keep that in mind.

Using 0.20...

 # grep die phorum/mods/embed_phorum/*
phorum/mods/embed_phorum/PhorumConnectorBase.php:        die("Phorum embedding connector \"" . $this->name . "\" " .
phorum/mods/embed_phorum/PhorumConnectorBase.php:        die("Phorum embedding connector \"" . $this->name . "\" " .
phorum/mods/embed_phorum/embed_phorum.php:    if (! isset($GLOBALS["PHORUM_CONNECTOR"])) die("
phorum/mods/embed_phorum/embed_phorum.php:            die("No user data found for user id $user_id. " .
phorum/mods/embed_phorum/run_phorum.php:if (! isset($GLOBALS["PHORUM_CONNECTOR"])) die("
phorum/mods/embed_phorum/run_phorum.php:    die("embed_phorum error: Cannot change directory to " .
phorum/mods/embed_phorum/run_phorum.php:            die();
phorum/mods/embed_phorum/syncuser.php:        die("embed_phorum_syncuser(): no user_id found in the syncuser data");
phorum/mods/embed_phorum/syncuser.php:        die("syncuser error: non-numerical user_id found in the syncuser data");
phorum/mods/embed_phorum/syncuser.php:            die("syncuser error: usernames cannot be changed, but for " .
phorum/mods/embed_phorum/syncuser.php:        die("embed_phorum_deleteuser(): no user_id found in the syncuser data");

IMO, it would be much nicer to throw exceptions directly in the embed code, as that will allow unique handling of specific exceptions - which is pretty vital for proper intergration... of course that will destroy PHP4 compat, but... who cares? ;)

Re: System for embedding Phorum in other applications (early preview)

Maurice Makaay — Thu, 15 May 2008 02:39:58 -0500

None of the head tags seem to be included in the page. For example if you search for something, then the redirect after the "busy searching" page is not done. This is handled through a meta refresh in the header, which is not present either apparently.

It sounds like this type of code (from mods/embed_phorum/connectors/mambo/connector.php) does not work (anymore?) for Joomla:

$mainframe->_head['custom'][] = $elements["style"];

I'm not a Joomla literate, but maybe you could ask around with people that do know more about Joomla than I do. The goal is to put some data in the page section programmatically.

Re: System for embedding Phorum in other applications (early preview)

PeterMartin — Thu, 15 May 2008 02:00:48 -0500

Hi Maurice,

Everything seems to work except it apparently isn't reading the CSS file:

[demo.vlynx.com]

The only change I made from your default Mambo install is in phorum.php

$PHORUM_DIR = "../phorum";

changed to

$PHORUM_DIR = "./phorum";

since it is installed in a directory under Joomla; i.e., ./joomla/phorum

I moved your sample embed templates into Phorum's template directory (./phorum/templates) and selected them in the Phorum admin.

I've tried my best reading the README, this thread, etc., but I admit some of this is over my head. Is there something obvious I'm missing?

--Peter

Re: System for embedding Phorum in other applications (early preview)

Maurice Makaay — Sat, 03 May 2008 04:21:08 -0500

Don't look at synchronizing users as having an extra user in there. The whole synchronization is mainly there for having a Phorum user data storage. Of course you can hack the whole code or use some smart hook implementations in user save / load code, but I would really advice to do the synchronization. Trust me on that one. When I started out with integrating Phorum 5 with my own site system, I tried really hard to build a clean solution to not have a Phorum users table, but whatever path I took, I kept running into problems with things like storing user forum preferences and private message support.

Re: System for embedding Phorum in other applications (early preview)

Gertjan — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:45:02 -0500

Thanks for your reply Maurice. I've looked into the "user_session_restore" hook and that seems fine though I would need to sync the existing users db with the table in Phorum. As I already need to keep two user tables, adding a third is not my favorite option.

I have Phorum 3 patched at a level that it doesn't use its own user table but my custom user login/profile system. Would the embed_phorum module allow a similar approach? Sorry to ask such a basic question but I haven't found much info on this module or what is exactly does.

Re: System for embedding Phorum in other applications (early preview)

Maurice Makaay — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:18:39 -0500

I'm working on that right now (good vacation time spending ;-) and I have some CMS systems downloaded on my laptop to test it. But not finished yet. Currently fighting a bit with Drupal and getting around to its module writing system to build a Phorum integration. I hope to finish a working setup during my flight back to the Netherlands.

If it's only for user integration and single sign on, you might also be able to take a different route. You could write a module that implements the "user_session_restore" hook, which is a really convenient hook for handling single sign on. The other thing to do would be keeping Phorum users in sync with the main system. If you search for "user_session_restore" in these forums, you'll be able to find some example implementations.

Re: System for embedding Phorum in other applications (early preview)

Gertjan — Thu, 01 May 2008 10:31:23 -0500

I'm preparing to upgrade from Phorum 3.4 to 5.2 (yup... it's about time) and have to integrate it with an existing (custom) login/authentication system. After playing with the embed_phorum module I run into troubles with the embed_default template as it appears not to be suitable for the current version.

Any news on an embedding template for 5.2 or any hints how to go about this?

Re: System for embedding Phorum in other applications (early preview)

Maurice Makaay — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 05:38:58 -0600

There's nothing different from the standard 5.1 for RSS when running embedded. Did you enable "Show and allow RSS-links" in the general settings page?

Re: System for embedding Phorum in other applications (early preview)

CaptDan — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 22:10:56 -0600

I have embedded Phorum into my aMember site, using Phorum 5.1.25 and embed_phorum_0.0.20 module. All is working great, but I've had members ask about setting up an RSS feed.

Is this possible with the embedded Phorum? How do I accomplish this? Can you give me a nudge in the right direction?

thanks!

CaptDan
[www.cvasports.com]

Re: System for embedding Phorum in other applications (early preview)

smario — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 13:00:18 -0600

We re-read the README file and manage to solve the problem with the header section. We've put the [element ...] parts into the master application template.

Re: System for embedding Phorum in other applications (early preview)

smario — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 10:56:28 -0600

Thanks a lot for the hints. I did as you said and template works almost perfectly, now.

Currently I'm having a hard time placing Style Sheets and Phorum JS into the existing header section from the Master application.

I'm using [element style] for that purpose, but I can't figure out why the Style Sheets appear in the body section of the master template. Should I create the new header within the master app, specially for the Phorum and put the "header elements" into it, and then remove them from the "embedded" header template part or is there a different approach to obtain this?

I've posted the Slovenian language file we did these days, for the newest Phorum version to the Language thread and the improvements will be posted there as well.

Re: System for embedding Phorum in other applications (early preview)

Maurice Makaay — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 03:24:43 -0600

The template must be moved into the main template directory or else Phorum won't see it. Additionally, the return should be "embed_emerald" (the name of the template directory). That ought to make it work.

I don't think that I would be ready in days, because of all the other things that I have to do. I guess that I won't get around it for at least two weeks. The integration project that I am doing has no priority. It should be ready "somwhere next year" (2008).

Re: System for embedding Phorum in other applications (early preview)

smario — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 01:57:20 -0600

The template is available in the "embed_phorum/templates/embed_emerald/" folder. Is this correct, or should I move it into "phorum/templates/" dir? I've updated the info.php's $name into "Phorum Emerald Template EMBEDDED".

In myconnector, there is a get method, where I tried inserting the template's location and then its name, but none of this worked.

function get_template()
    {
		//return "embed_emerald";
		return "Phorum Emerald Template EMBEDDED";
    }

It's always referencing to the original "emerald" template, found in root folder and as set in the admin section of the phorum.

I've must be missing something so I'm taking a closer look at the template files and also README and other helpfull stuff. It is indeed well documented, so I guess I just need some more time to figure it out.

I can help you with the template rightaway if you like, as I need to put the same thing together, as well - so maybe it's better to join the forces :). How far are you with the template anyway (is it a few days or more)?

Re: System for embedding Phorum in other applications (early preview)

Maurice Makaay — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:03:08 -0600

Make sure that that template is used. Do you have a get_template() method in your connector that returns the template name? And is the template available in the "templates" directory?

I am working on an embedding solution for "CMS Made Simple" currenctly and while I'm doing that, I am converting the emerald template for embedding as well. So I think that a compatible template for 5.2 embedding will be coming from me soon too.

Re: System for embedding Phorum in other applications (early preview)

smario — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 18:20:52 -0600

I've successfully installed phorum 5.2.4 RC2 version and mod_embed_phorum 1.0.1, but I have problems with the template. I've read posts about the issue and I need help setting the template.

What I did so far, I copied the "emerald" template into the embed_phorum templates folder and tried to correctly set the "header.tpl" in order to include required [element ... parts. I tried with style and body_data, but without success... the front page still displays "The Phorum output is missing [element ...] sections." error.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Regards,
Mario

Re: System for embedding Phorum in other applications (early preview)

Maurice Makaay — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 19:05:00 -0500

Quote
Diane_Syneron
The culprit in question is phorum_redirect_by_url, and it appears to get short-cut through after attempting to make a post.

I'm sorry, but I do not yet see the problem that you run into with this. phorum_redirect_by_url() is called after posting a message. What exact part of it is problematic for you?

Re: System for embedding Phorum in other applications (early preview)

Diane_Syneron — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 18:28:15 -0500

The culprit in question is phorum_redirect_by_url, and it appears to get short-cut through after attempting to make a post.

As far as the errors go, there are a number of die statements in the db folder, one or two of which I happened to run across while setting up the system. Nothing major and it should never come up in normal usage, but being able to format and handle those errors would be nice.

For the admin section, since it would only be available to IT personnel, I've created a RewriteRule to send requests to the admin page from a predetermined url. That should keep things simple enough for now.

Of course, all of this is on the latest stable, so much of it may not be an issue in 5.2.

Re: System for embedding Phorum in other applications (early preview)

Maurice Makaay — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 08:19:42 -0500

Quote
Diane_Syneron
Okay, I think I just hit a snag with the integration.

When making a post, it appears that the post script is sending an HTTP redirect that is outside of the embed module's control.

Any suggestions for getting around it?

The module has a chance to format the URLs to load. So that could be a place to work at. But can you explain the exact problem that you run into here?

admin from other dir

Running the admin embedded isn't really an option. I have something like it working on my site, but it's ugly:

It has my own header and the admin header, so it ends up with multiple starts in the source code. For me it's okay and it works, but it is not a nice solution. Maybe you can try to put something like it in your site's document root to see if it works for you as well? For me, the phorum dir is still inside the document root, so I'm not sure if things are missing if you'd do this.

handling errors gracefully

We try to use trigger_error() for all errors in Phorum. Those errors could be caught by an exception handler. There might still be die() calls in there. If you find any that get in your way, then please tell us. We can change them to trigger_error(). Maybe a future idea for the embed_phorum mod could be to offer such an error handler and a callback method. I'll keep that in mind.

Re: System for embedding Phorum in other applications (early preview)

Diane_Syneron — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 17:29:00 -0500

Okay, I think I just hit a snag with the integration.

When making a post, it appears that the post script is sending an HTTP redirect that is outside of the embed module's control.

Any suggestions for getting around it?

Re: System for embedding Phorum in other applications (early preview)

Diane_Syneron — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 15:43:32 -0500

First off, I'd like to say thank you for building this module. We've been looking at various ways to integrate forum software into our customer systems for a little while now, and this was the first package that offered actual integration where we could control the authentication and registration mechanisms instead of the other way around.

I did have one question for the short term, and one long term one, however...

Since the forum package is now running under the embed module, I've actually moved the system out from the document root directory and into a lib directory for our MVC architecture. However, that means that access is cut off to the admin page, which still runs outside of the embedded forums. Is there any way to changes this, so that the entire forum stack can run through the processor?

On a long term note, from my attempts to set up and configure phorum and the embed module, I've noticed that most failure conditions tend to die rather than throw errors and was wondering if that might change down the road? It would be extremely helpful for someone like me to have a chance to catch errors and display my own items rather than the blank page with a (mostly) non user-friendly message.

Re: System for embedding Phorum in other applications (early preview)

Maurice Makaay — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 13:50:45 -0500

So the basic problem here was that the embed_phorum module was not enabled. You can still call the wrapper like you did, but it will miss the functionality that is implemented in the module. Thanks for the explanation and have a lot of fun with the mod!