AbleDesign

[cjswimmer]

I am working on adapting the calendar I bought from you to work with PHPNuke. I want to pull from my existing Nuke userlist and I don't want users to be able to create their own accounts just for the calendar. I found the database field name array in config.php which I thought was great, until I found that it was rarely referenced in the other files for the project. The field names are hard coded in a number of different places, so I am working on replacing the references to field names with the array entries from config.php. Since I want to manage my userlist from Nuke and not MyCalendar, I don't need to worry about the confirmation hash field which was the only field that didn't have a comparable field in the nuke_users table. I'll be taking out the 'user create' and 'user delete' portions of the project, although I'm keeping the groups functionality. I'll just be grouping Nuke users instead of MyCalendar users. I haven't decided whether I'll be using an 'link-login' method (dirty) to get to the calendar or whether I'll try to get the currently logged in Nuke User from inside the MyCalendar project (cleaner but more difficult). I think its a great application and I just wanted you to know about the fieldname references for future releases.
I'll try to keep a detailed record about what I change in case you wanted to make the changes yourself, or in case anyone else wants to integrate with PHPNuke themselves. I figure its better you should distribute the changes because I don't want to post any source code to the public.

A Very Satisified Customer,
Christopher Smith

[Dan]

Hi Christopher,

Thanks for taking the time to share that. I know a number of people have expressed interest in modifying the MyCalendar/D-Man User tables to interact with various other programs, so you may well be a pioneer.

I guess it would be good to remove the hardcoded field name references wherever possible. I tend to do that more for the calendar table (and the downloads table in D-Man), but for what you're trying to do, that would be very helpful. That would be great if you want to pass along the changes you make so I can look into doing the same thing for a future release.

Cheers,
Dan

[cjswimmer]

I think for right now I'm just going to modify my copy to run as a separate page that draws from my Nuke userlist, but after that's done and I have some free time I'd like to turn it into a Nuke module that you can administer right from the PHPNuke Admin panel. I'm marking all the code I change as I go so it should be pretty easy to pick out what's different when I send you a copy of the changes. This is all free time work right now, which I have little of, so it may be a little while before I finish it all up.

[Dan]

How difficult is it to make it work as a PHPNuke module?

Cheers,
Dan

[cjswimmer]

well I am still fairly new to PHP so it looks like a heap of work. So far I am making a decent amount of progress in the fieldname reference work. I'm trying to implement an invisible auto-login by setting the
appropriate session variables when a user logs into Nuke. That way when the calendar index.php page is called the page thinks you are already logged in. If I remove the change password, email and logout options it should do what I need. I'll keep you posted.

[cjswimmer]

Sorry, forgot to comment about the module idea. There is some documentation that describes what the rules are for creating a PHPNuke module here:
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/PHP-Nuke-HOWTO/creating-modules.html.

I still have to read more on it but I think most of the work would involve the calls to different pages. Everything has to be called by
modules.php?name=MyCalendar&op=blahblah .
As I said before I'm still pretty new to Nuke and PHP but I'm enjoying myself. This could proabably all be done pretty easily by someone more experienced but its keeping me busy and I'm learning all kinds of stuff in the meantime.

[cjswimmer]

I'm probably about 75% done with the public part of the nuke module port. The more difficult part will be moving the admin portion to the Nuke Admin section because the Nuke Admin section requirements are quite complex. I should have a demo page for you to see over the next week or two. I've had to abandon the documentation part of this port it due to the limited amount of time I have and the volume of code that I needed to change. I usually hate doing any kind of programming without documentation but I think you'll be able to pick out the changes easily enough. I'll keep you updated as I make progress.

cjswimmer

[Dan]

Thanks for the updates. I look forward to seeing what you've put together.

I look at documentation as sort of an always in progress activity. You can't really document a program or add-on before it's done, so the documentation is always trailing along behind...

Cheers,
Dan

[Dan]

Hi Christopher,

Any news? I just finished going through the MyCalendar code and replacing all the hard coded Users/Calendar table field names with the $db_users and $db_calendar equivalents, so that'll be in place for the next release.

Cheers,
Dan