Hello,

I have been -attempting- to mod for E-Blah for a while and now I want to request some help making a mod. I have made it halfway but I haven't perfected it.

I have wrote a PHP script to link E-Blah with the following chat system.

https://blueimp.net/ajax/

It lacks several features and I need someone with a better understanding of the E-Blah system than me to help. Below are some things I need help with.

• Determining which users are admins and mods of the forums to apply them to the chat system.
  
• Creating different chat rooms dynamically according to the boards that are made.
  
• Allowing/disallowing users to different rooms according to forum permissions.
  
• Making a small fix to the E-Blah template to check the chat room MySQL database and show if/which users are on the chat.
  

I know this is like ALL the features needed but what I have wrote is a PHP script that will read the user database and create a chat room account (all dynamically) according to their forum account. I have it currently set up to check the passwords that are md5 encrypted but I am sure I can modify it to the appropriate encryption.

I will set up a demo forum sometime but for now you are welcome to see them in use on my site.

If I was not clear on anything please let me know and I will be glad to explain better. Things are VERY hectic where I am today so my brain is a bit stressed.

Best wishes!

http://animisoft.com/forum - Forum
http://chat.animisof.com - AJAX Chat

P.S. Feel free to make a forum account just to test the chat. I only use the forums for writing my development ideas and for members of another forum I host to visit and chat.

Update: I have seen a few new users on my board (I don't know if they are from here or not). If you could just let me know here if you have any problems that would be great.

Hi there. You made me curious, so I registered.   One problem, though: how do I check the chat script? The address http://chat.animisof.com ain't working for me (I'm using OpenDNS, which says "You tried to visit chat.animisof.com, which is not loading."), and I can't find a link on the forum, either.

You raise a valid point. That is because I typo'd the address  

The correct address is:

http://chat.animisoft.com

This may not help, but hopefully it does.  

You may want to check out the Member API thing I wrote a few years ago for E-Blah.  I hope it still works with the latest versions, but it'll display member information.  You should be able to easily modify this file so it can tie directly into your PHP script using SimpleXML.  You may want to cache the queries if you'll need to query E-Blah often for the XML API data feed, though.

You'll want to make sure that all of the new membership areas are put into that API that way it can easily interface with the system.  If you'd want the API to give stuff normal users shouldn't have access too, you may want to add a password to the API query.

Again, I hope this helps.    Remember: API's are your friend when doing things like this -- that way if things with the foreign system change, you don't have to rework as much code.

Does this AJAX chat require MySQL? I think many of the people that use E-Blah don't have SQL support.

Justin: Thank you for the advice I have only used an API once and had a bad experience with it because it was written so complex and lacked documentation and I never used one again.

Gaahl: It does require MySQL but I am not sure oh how I would convert that. I am looking around for different chat systems. I like that chat system because it is just something I am familiar with and the chatrooms and users are not stored in a database.

I have been shopping around for other (AJAX) chat systems and I can't find any I'm really happy with. This system also has a way to write commands and I am a long-time IRC'er so it appeals to me that way too    

The E-Blah Member API is very simple, trust me.    PHP's SimpleXML classes are amazing and will make everything quick.

I don't want this to turn into a bragging thread but that is why I like eblah because I can mod for it and I don't even know PERL. I appreciate you taking your time in doing this.


As for the API: As soon as I re-accustom to my Fujitsu Lifebook P1120 and Puppy Linux I will start reading it

One thing I am working on also is trying to figure out a way to create a room for each board and disallowing users to join that board if they don't have access.