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[vBulletin|PHP|HTML]Automatic Template Edits

by Ziki 28 Aug 2006

You are creating a new vBulletin product and want to make it more user friendly so that the users don't have to edit the templates manually?Then this tutorial will point you the right way.Basically the code I am going to demonstrate simply finds a specific part of a template and inserts our code/template into it.

Ok let's say you have a template or a piece of html code you want to include somewhere:

HTML Code:

<em>My name is $name and welcome to $board</em>

Ok now we have to options:

1. Insert the code into a template and then insert the whole template into the site.

So you now have the html code in your template called TEMPLATE.I suggest you cache it for faster loading.To do that create a new plugin on the cache_templates hook with this content:

PHP Code:


$globaltemplates  = array_merge($globaltemplates, array('TEMPLATE', 'TEMPLATE2'));

$globaltemplates variable are the templates that are supposed to be cached.It is an array because it contains multiple templates,default ones and the ones from other 3rd party products.

So now what we just need to do,is insert our template into another one.To do that you need to know what page you want to display it on,the hooks that are located on that page and the templates called.In the template you will add the code in find a block of code that is static,thus won't ever be changed (like html comments).Should be one liner.Our template is TEMPLATE and the one that will include it is MAINTEMPLATE.

Then use this phpcode.

PHP Code:


$variable = 'OUR STATIC CODE';

$vbulletin->templatecache['MAINTEMPLATE'] = str_replace($variable,$variable.fetch_template('TEMPLATE'),$vbulletin->templatecache['MAINTEMPLATE'])

;]=]=>

Explanation: the template MAINTEMPLATE is represented by the variable $vbulletin->templatecache['MAINTEMPLATE'].So we changed the way it is represented.We used str_replace to change the MAINTEMPLATE,so now it added the TEMPLATE into it.It searched for $variable and attached the template into it.

To include a code on every page use the hook global_start and the template header,footer or headinclude

DONE

2. Insert the code into a variable and insert it via replace.

Ok this is a bit easier than the code above.So we still want to add the code but don't want a template?Make the code into a variable.

PHP Code:


$template = '<em>My name is $name and welcome to $board</em>';

we used ' apostrophes instead of " so that the code isn't parsed directly in the variable but rather in the template.Note,if you have ' or " in your code,you have to put \ before them so that php doesn't think it belongs into the main code.

Then just use the code before.

PHP Code:


$template = '<em>My name is $name and welcome to $board</em>';

$variable = 'OUR STATIC CODE';

$vbulletin->templatecache['MAINTEMPLATE'] = str_replace($variable,$variable.$template,$vbulletin->templatecache['MAINTEMPLATE'])

;]=]=>

DONE

3. Insert the code into a variable and call the variable in the template.

This is the easiest way.So we have $template already specified and we just put the variable ($template) into any template and vBulletin will parse it

.But you have to make sure that the hook the variable is on,is called on that page!
DONE

4. Attach code to an existing variable in the template.
This method became easier when vBulletin introduced template hooks. For instance,open template navbar and you can find $template_hook['navbar_buttons_left'] somewhere in the code,thanks to which you can add new navbar buttons simply using plugins.To do that,I make a new plugin on global_setup_complete (or any plugin called where the variable is) and add this code:

PHP Code:


$template_hook['navbar_buttons_left'] .= '<td class="vbmenu_control"><a href="file.php' . $session['sessionurl_q'] . '" accesskey="5" >' . $vbphrase['mynewbutton'] . '</a></td>';

See the ".=" ?That means that the code following it was added to the variable's value and thus displayed when the variable is parsed

.

You can also attach a whole template this way.In the next example I added my template below navbar.

PHP Code:


eval('$navbar .= "' . fetch_template('mytemplate') . '";');

DONE

I hope this article has helped you understand this topic and develop better and more user friendly products!

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