New Threads from Outside vBulletin

[seoyo]

Hi, I'm creating an application that will reside on the same server as our vBulletin install. It will allow people to create threads from outside the vBulletin system using a different interface.

I've tailed the MySQL logs to see what's going on in MySQL when a new thread is created, and have now as a result established everything necessary to make a new thread and post from outside. The only question I have left is about the posthash table in a standard vBulletin install.

Although the userid, threadid, postid and dateline columns in this table are self explanatory, I do not know how the dupehash is generated. Can anyone shed some light on this?

Also, this is the only line I could fine in the source that showed how the hash is generated. Is this correct (the $dupehash value is what is eventually inserted into the dupehash table in the dupehash column)?

$dupehash = md5($forumid . $this->fetch_field('title') . $this->fetch_field('pagetext', 'post') . $userid . $type);

[Farcaster]

Just out of curiosity, why not use the thread and post data manager in your application to create the threads? This would be the easiest and least error prone solution, and would also be less sensitive to upgrades to vBulletin.

[seoyo]

My understanding of the post data manager is that it requires you to be within the vBulletin environment. My application is totally outside of vBulletin, so there will be no session, cookie, or other user specific values available when the new thread is created. If that's not the case, would you mind pointing me to documentation that shows how to use the data manager outside of the vBulletin environment?

--------------- Added [DATE]1208555317[/DATE] at [TIME]1208555317[/TIME] ---------------

Sorry to bump post, I'm curious to know if anyone knows anything at all about what I'm asking. Maybe I need to clarify something?