Running another database within a vBulletin page
 

I run a website about medical school admissions in the UK. The main shell of the website (http://www.study-medicine.co.uk) is a vBulletin forum. Another part of the website is a statistics database that runs from a seperate mysql database. Until now the way it worked was to have the statistics database outside of the vBulletin shell since they both run on seperate databases, but this means I can't use the navbar/navbits stuff on that part of the website which is a shame, it would also be nice to be able to restrict the database to my users so I can keep track of who is using it.

So I want to stick my stats database into the middle of a vBulletin page.

So heres my basic vBulletin page ready to accept the database.

And heres my stats database ready to be put into the middle of that vBulletin page.

How do I go about getting it to work? When I copy and past the stats database code into the vBulletin page I get an error on the first line.

Thanks for your help.

As a side note iframes are not an options.

is the second database running in mysql? It seems to me you have two databases on one mysql server but ¿are the connection strings the same? ¿Do you know if vbulletin's DB user has access to the other DB?

I ask this because once you include global (as in any vb based page) you have the connection already worked out, and if the user has privileges over the second database it might be just a matter of adding dbname before the table query.

Perhaps you just need to rewrite the queries in order for the integration to work.

hi amenadiel,

I have two seperate mysql servers at two seperate physical locations. One has the vBulletin board on it, the other my admissions statistics database. So I have seperate localhost, username, password and dbnames for each mysql database.

I can get it to connect to one database, but not both at the same time. heres it he code I'm using:

Thanks so much for your help.

And the result is 'Error connecting to mysql'?

What happens if you put the connect to the 2nd database in a test script, can it connect or does it fail also?

I can connect to the second database in a test script, infact thats how its working at the moment. But I want to fully integrate it so I can use user permissions and the navbar from vbulletin.

Literally what I need is a page like this:

$Header
$header include
$navbar

-------

$second_database

-------

$footer

I understand that PHP Echo commands (which get used a lot in my stats database) break the vbulletin script, so I tried using my stats database HTML and PHP as a plugin, hooked to global start (with ob_clean etc) and entered as $second_database into the template. but it doesnt work. it just loads the page with the header/navbar and nothing in the middle.

Or perhaps I'm using the wrong hook? Surely global start applies to all files that reference /global.php? even custom ones.

And what message do you get when using the full script? If it is empty, then it should have been connected correctly to the second database.

PS I doubt the paramters you use on the mysql_connect are correct, but with the edited out values i can not check this.

I remember seeing a discussion in the past where someone had the same issue and I recall they had to connect to the new database to get the data and then reconect to the vbulletin data to continue on.

I am not sure that this really helps much but I tried to find the thread and here are a few other topics that might help:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...nnect+database

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...nnect+database

I will have to look more as I recall there was a thread on here that described how to do it but I have not found it.

Good Luck & please share your fix if you find one as I don't have an immediate use but I could find one!

my mysql_connect parameters are definately working, you can see it in action at: http://www.study-medicine.co.uk/viewdatabase2.php. But that is made to look like the vbulletin chasis but its entirely outside the database. its just a look-a-like. Ideally I want to use navbar/header etc. and to monitor or even restrict access (e.g. if we have to pay for those statistics later on we may want to make those pages a paid subscription only service).

Thanks quarterbore, I'll have a look at those.

Maybe there is an easier way to ask this question, forget everything I've said first off. What I want to do is insert the following code into a vbulletin page. How do I do it?

Put it in a script and do: Including External Files

Tried that originally, doesn't seem to work. Just loads the header/include/navbar portion of the page but with no contents. (and no error messages.) I was using global start but perhaps it should use a different one. Which would you use? (template is a custom template if that factors into it).

can you try this?

obviously, replace each parameter with your own




Another idea: what kind of connection do you have in your config.php? try using mysqli, I believe you can have a mysqli connection open for VB and a regular legacy mysql connection with the remote server.


Another one: you can download remote db contents to a textfile and parse it to fill a local table using your VB cron let's say twice a day.

Last one: log into your VB host phpmyadmin and run the SQL sentence:

you might have mysql compiled with FEDERATED engine support with would somewhat be an easier solution.