Accessing user/cookie info outside of vBulletin

[Greg-J]

I'm creating a pseudo-marketplace outside of vbulletin and I'm running into a snag where I think many people do and I can't seem to find the solution I'm after.

I really need to be able to know if a user is logged into vbulletin and if they are, get their messages information, (userid, # of new/old messages etc.) and other things like the popup notification when they get a new message (although that's trivial at this point).

Any help would be much appreciated. I'm really just looking to know what vbulletin files/functions/classes I need to be using/including and any tips you might have the subject.

[cheesegrits]

There is a wealth of information on these forums and in the articles section covering this. Try searching for some obvious keywords.

Not being a smartass, just reminding you that "Search" is your friend. :)

-- hugh

[Greg-J]

I've searched and browsed quite a bit but I'm either not using the right keywords or they don't exist. I wouldn't have posted the question before I looked for the answer myself.

That said, the only in depth article I found involved doing this at the apache level which is not an appropriate solution for my application.

Again; any help would be much appreciated.

[Dismounted]

Include vBulletin's global.php. That will give you the essential functions including if the user is logged in or not.

[Greg-J]

Include vBulletin's global.php. That will give you the essential functions including if the user is logged in or not.
This seems to only work if you're including that file from within the same directory, which I am not. Even so, when I do move into the directory vB is installed and include the file I am presented with a no referrer error (not a big deal), but if I'm not logged in I get an odd mix of errors and partial html which just isn't going to work.

I apologize for the ignorance, but surely there must be hundreds of people who have done this and have documented it somewhere?

[Dismounted]

It has, and most times, the solution was posted by me ;).
$curdir = cwd();
chdir('./forum/');
require_once('/global.php');
chdir($curdir);

[Greg-J]

Ahh, thank you.

Now, about the no http referrer/not logged in issues. Got anything for those? :)


UPDATE:

Your code must have been written on the fly ;) This is what works:

$curdir = getcwd();
chdir('./forum/');
require_once('global.php');
chdir($curdir);

Could still use some help on the bit about someone being logged in or not. Cheers.

[Dismounted]

Yes, sorry, I typed the code out, it would've taken longer for me to copy and paste :p.
if (!empty($vbulletin->userinfo['userid']))
{
// user is logged in
}
else
{
// user is not logged in/guest
}

[Greg-J]

Cheers, but....


The issue isn't that the class is empty, it's that somewhere throughout the process in global.php. View this page to see what I mean:

http://www.myspacepros.com/_test.php

[Dismounted]

You might need to set the Cookie Domain/Path properly for it to recognise logged in users.

[Greg-J]

It recognizes logged in users fine. It's when you view the page when you're not logged in. The script doesn't even get all the way through global.php before it starts spitting out information...

[cheesegrits]

That link you posted works fine for me. Shows the link back to the page, and "not logged in".

-- hugh

[Greg-J]

That link you posted works fine for me. Shows the link back to the page, and "not logged in".

-- hugh
Really?

This is what I get when navigating to that page while not logged in:

Notice: Undefined index: HTTP_REFERER in /var/www/vhosts/myspacepros.com/httpdocs/forum/includes/class_core.php on line 1574

Unable to add cookies, header already sent.
File: /var/www/vhosts/myspacepros.com/httpdocs/forum/includes/class_core.php
Line: 1574

I'm a bit lost now....

[cheesegrits]

That's because you have error reporting set to include notices in PHP. Which generates a 'notice' output if $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] isn't set when vB tries to do this:

define('REFERRER', $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']);

When I hit the page, I'm clicking the link on this page first, so the HTTP_REFERER is set with the vborg page I'm being referred by. If you hit your page without being 'referred' by another page (i.e. type the URL in by hand in your browser), then HTTP_REFERER won't be set. And because the notice is being printed before vB sends the page headers, it screws up page output.

To fix that you'll need to turn off 'notice' level reporting in php.ini:

; - Show all errors except for notices and coding standards warnings
;
error_reporting = E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE

Of course the real fix would be for vB to test for the existence of $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] before using it in a define(), so if you want to go submit a bug report on vb.com ...

-- hugh

[Greg-J]

Thank you very much cheesegrits. I'm a little embarrassed I didn't think of that myself to be honest. Thank you.