Integrating external script with vB
 

Hi,

I currently integrate my homepage with vbulletin in order to fetch user login and session data. The code I use to do that is as follows:

...and it works like a charm. However, when I wrap that in a function, like so:

Everything mysteriously blows up and I get the following PHP error:

PHP Fatal error: Call to a member function query_first_slave() on a non-object in [DIR]/forums/includes/functions.php on line 1386

Where line 1386 uses $vbulletin->db->query_first_slave to fetch the userinfo.

Any ideas why this could be? Is it a scope issue?

As a temporary workaround, I've simply placed the code in a separate file and include it whenever I need the integration. I know that a better solution would be to connect to the database only to fetch user data and use my own session, but for now I want to keep things quick and dirty (and secure) :)

Yes, I think it's a scope issue. The vb code is intending to create some global variables but when you put the "require" in a function they're not global.

Edit: maybe if you could figure out which variables those are you could add "global" statements in your function before the require_once('global.php').

Though so - but I can't explain it! I tried making everything that ended up in $GLOBALS after the first code ran global inside the function, but that didn't help either (there were dozens of variables!).

Thanks for the reply- I suppose that instead of calling a function I will just include the code from a while while I'm in the global scope.

Hmm...I was curious about this (I'm not really any kind of php expert so I like to figure these things out). I found that if I just put a "global $vbulletin;" at the beginning of the login function it seems to work OK. I guess most of the globals aren't used for what you're doing (unless maybe it's because I don't have all you code? Anyway, the error you posted above goes away).

Let me try again- I could have sworn I tried that, though!

Also, if you want to use functions as if they were in the global scope, here's a nice line of code that does just that (I use it for template evaluations so you don't have to write out the eval() statement every time:

--------------- Added [DATE]1317700823[/DATE] at [TIME]1317700823[/TIME] ---------------

Update: no dice. Maybe my version to PHP is to blame (5.1.6)? Highly unlikely, but possible, I guess. I don't see reason from a coding standpoint that the inclusion from inside the function should work, as even with the variable scope vbulletin shouldn't care.

The extract thing is pretty handy, but of course it will only import the global variables that exist already - variables that are created after that line won't automatically be global, of course. And $vbulletin doesn't exist before global.php is included.

I can tell you that it's not your php version. I had a similar problem with php 5.2.17, I fixed it by creating by own global file :P

Either way it's probably a scope issue like kh99 mentioned.