Tuesday, July 26. 2005
Integrating other sites with PHPBB
I have been working on integrating a PHPBB forum with an established site for a client. Their site has a pre-existing user base and sign-in method, and I didn't want to disturb that.
This knowledge base article at phpbb.com details the basics of bringing PHPBB sessions into your other code. It includes common.php, which, if you read the source code, includes everything and the kitchen sink for PHPBB: general functions, template code, authenticaion/permissions code, etc. I decided to try to trim it down, as the only "feature" I needed from PHPBB on the main site was to keep a PHPBB session alive while the user used the main part of the website. This looks like more code than suggested in the PHPBB KB article, but it's really less code overall, and it seems to work.
This method is working OK for me so far. I've got several other steps to really get things integrated. One problem is that the existing site's code uses a global variable to access the database known as $db, and guess what, so does PHPBB, but they're not compatible.
I'm also toying with the idea of stripping out PHPBB's existing session code and replacing it with my own which will connect the main site and the forum. I need to see how well PHPBB's session code is written and if it's mostly separated from the rest of the PHPBB code. But you might give this code a shot if you want to work with PHPBB's sessions.
Update 2006-04-12: I had to update this code to work with PHPBB 2.0.20. I also changed the PHPBB message_die() function to PHP's die() function since I'm not including it from the PHPBB functions.
This knowledge base article at phpbb.com details the basics of bringing PHPBB sessions into your other code. It includes common.php, which, if you read the source code, includes everything and the kitchen sink for PHPBB: general functions, template code, authenticaion/permissions code, etc. I decided to try to trim it down, as the only "feature" I needed from PHPBB on the main site was to keep a PHPBB session alive while the user used the main part of the website. This looks like more code than suggested in the PHPBB KB article, but it's really less code overall, and it seems to work.
define('IN_PHPBB', true);
$phpbb_root_path = '/somepath/';
include($phpbb_root_path . 'extension.inc');
include($phpbb_root_path . 'config.'.$phpEx);
$ip_sep = explode('.',$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
$user_ip=sprintf('%02x%02x%02x%02x', $ip_sep[0], $ip_sep[1], $ip_sep[2], $ip_sep[3]);
include($phpbb_root_path . 'includes/constants.'.$phpEx);
include($phpbb_root_path . 'includes/sessions.'.$phpEx);
include($phpbb_root_path . 'includes/db.'.$phpEx);
$strSQL = "SELECT config_name, config_value FROM " . CONFIG_TABLE . " WHERE config_name IN ('cookie_name', 'cookie_path', 'cookie_domain', 'cookie_secure', 'session_length');";
if( !($result = $db->sql_query($strSQL)) ) {
die('Could not query config information');
}
while ( $row = $db->sql_fetchrow($result) ) {
$board_config[$row['config_name']] = $row['config_value'];
}
$userdata = array();
$userdata = session_pagestart($user_ip, PAGE_INDEX);
$phpbb_root_path = '/somepath/';
include($phpbb_root_path . 'extension.inc');
include($phpbb_root_path . 'config.'.$phpEx);
$ip_sep = explode('.',$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
$user_ip=sprintf('%02x%02x%02x%02x', $ip_sep[0], $ip_sep[1], $ip_sep[2], $ip_sep[3]);
include($phpbb_root_path . 'includes/constants.'.$phpEx);
include($phpbb_root_path . 'includes/sessions.'.$phpEx);
include($phpbb_root_path . 'includes/db.'.$phpEx);
$strSQL = "SELECT config_name, config_value FROM " . CONFIG_TABLE . " WHERE config_name IN ('cookie_name', 'cookie_path', 'cookie_domain', 'cookie_secure', 'session_length');";
if( !($result = $db->sql_query($strSQL)) ) {
die('Could not query config information');
}
while ( $row = $db->sql_fetchrow($result) ) {
$board_config[$row['config_name']] = $row['config_value'];
}
$userdata = array();
$userdata = session_pagestart($user_ip, PAGE_INDEX);
This method is working OK for me so far. I've got several other steps to really get things integrated. One problem is that the existing site's code uses a global variable to access the database known as $db, and guess what, so does PHPBB, but they're not compatible.
I'm also toying with the idea of stripping out PHPBB's existing session code and replacing it with my own which will connect the main site and the forum. I need to see how well PHPBB's session code is written and if it's mostly separated from the rest of the PHPBB code. But you might give this code a shot if you want to work with PHPBB's sessions.
Update 2006-04-12: I had to update this code to work with PHPBB 2.0.20. I also changed the PHPBB message_die() function to PHP's die() function since I'm not including it from the PHPBB functions.
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great code, only got stuck when I tried to output the data for testing using:
foreach ($userdata as $key => $data)
{echo $key . " " . $date . ""; }
whacks head Another case of the brain running faster than the hands, i spotted the obvious shortly, your page has been added to our credits and will be up once our new site goes live in a few months.
works great, thanks for the time saver
foreach ($userdata as $key => $data)
{echo $key . " " . $date . ""; }
whacks head Another case of the brain running faster than the hands, i spotted the obvious shortly, your page has been added to our credits and will be up once our new site goes live in a few months.
works great, thanks for the time saver
I'm developing a site that has phpBB integration and have the login working except for one thing. If you look at the bottom of the standard phpbb homepage, you see username and password input boxes which are prepopulated with the user's data IF that user had clicked Remember Me when they last logged in. I would like to have this happen on my site's login page, but I don't know how to get the data from the cookie. I can see the cookie, but the values are obscured, and I don't know how to extract them.
Any clue?
Thanks, and thanks for posting the helpful information.
Jack
Any clue?
Thanks, and thanks for posting the helpful information.
Jack
I think those boxes are actually populated by the web browser, not PHPBB. Most sites won't pre-fill password boxes since you can look at the page source and see the real password.
