Administrative and Maintenance Tools - [ForumOps] vBulletin Development Environment

vBulletin Development Environment

vBulletin Development Environment (VDE) is a tool that allows you to build vBulletin products entirely from the filesystem. By using the filesystem, it allows you to follow best practises such as using version control, and simply working on actual files. Having to switch between browser windows and copy/paste is extremely inefficient.

This product has been updated to work with with vBulletin 3.5 and up to the latest 4.x series.

Runtime Environment

Assuming all of your files are in place, VDE checks your ./projects directory on every page load, and injects all of your projects' templates, plugins, etc. into memory and runs them as if they were natively installed into vBulletin.

Product Builder

VDE also comes with a project builder, which allows you to export your project into a standard product XML, and also any associated files with your project.

Open Source

This product is open source, and I encourage everyone who uses it to contribute back via GitHub.

Installation Instructions

Short version: upload files, import product XML. There are slightly different instructions based on whether or not you are running vBulletin 3 or 4.

Full instructions can be found at:
https://github.com/ForumOps/vBulleti...nt-Environment

I will not be posting any change logs or detailed instructions here, because they may change heavily with each version. Please refer to the GitHub page.

Disclaimer: this product was originally developed by SirAdrian / Adrian Schneider, who is part of our staff, and the primary maintainer of the product still.

[Blaine0002]

yes, i dont seem to be getting the use of $vboptions or $vbulletin->options for products with VDE

filename: vbay_seller_usergroups.php

PHP Code:

<?php

$option = array(
    'title'          => 'Seller Usergroups',
    'description'    => 'Usergroup IDs for people that can post auctions, seperated by commas',
    'datatype'       => 'free',
    'optioncode'     => 'input',
    'displayorder'   => 1,
    'defaultvalue'   => "",
    'value'          => "9"
);

$vboptions[vbay_seller_usergroups] in any template returns nothing.

[Adrian Schneider]

ah, yes.

PHP Code:

<?php return array(
     // stuff here
);

Let me know if that fixes it for you. The documentation @ GitHub has been updated as well, FYI.


@Brendon, there were two projects I did around the same time, but yours was one of them, yes. Yours was the first of the two, so it was a little slower, but the second one was super quick.

And guys, I'm guilty. I still have to push some updates and update the packages as well.

[Blaine0002]

oh good! i was thinking i was just having a derp moment and missing a semicolon or bracket somewhere

edit: and yes that fixed it for me. thanks muchly.

[Adrian Schneider]

Would you guys be interested in some sort of mechanism to allow you to have all of your files + projects directory OUT of vBulletin, for the sake of easier (and lighter) versioning?

Phase 1 would be support for the projects to live outside of vBulletin. Have a command line function to copy all of the files into vBulletin. (or for power users, rsync or similar to keep the directories in sync)

Phase 2 would be a PHP-based solution for this, though I'm not really sure what that would look like yet in terms of linux + windows compatibility...

Any thoughts?

[Marv]

Jesus christ, what a mod! Adrian, we germans call that the eierlegende Wollmilchsau (a funnier version of one-does-it-all)! Great work, much appreciated. Nominated.

[Adrian Schneider]

Glad you like it.

It has been an enormous help to me on a daily (hourly?) basis.

[EquinoxWorld]

Adrian, I am somewhat a noob at coding and at developing software, would this be a good place to start with? Would it be easy for me to start developing my own mod with this tool? I have owned and managed my website for over 2 years and do all of the "technical" stuff but haven't really put myself to learn the actual development; in the last weeks I have dived in , literally dived in to a warm delicious pool of codes and variables and I must say I LOVE IT! Any pointers for a noob to start playing with this mod to get a better handle on how vb modification come about? Or any light in the right direction for that matter would be awesome. Thanks Adrian!

P.S.: Anyone looking to be a mentor for a "natural" (wishful thinking) coder please let me know.
P.S.: Joined Github - EquinoxAW

[Adrian Schneider]

VDE adds a small layer of complexity on top of what exists already, so I can't say whether or not it will help you understand programming.

However, if you use it to convert a downloaded product into actual files you can look at it, you will be able to get your hands dirtier a lot faster since you can edit a file, save it, and see what happens.

Best advise I can give you is to ask a ton of questions. The private coders discussion forum is probably your best bet for vBulletin stuff.

Cheers

[ForumOps]

Next planned features:

Include other files in a release - Immediately - Add a way to include other files as part of the release that don't go in 'upload'. This will probably be a new subfolder per project so you can create folders such as "do_not_upload" or "docs" in there.

Merging Automatic Template Compiler with VDE - Several Weeks - ATC is a similar modification to VDE, but instead of running things from filesystem and injecting into memory, it actually persists the templates properly into a style. This is fantastic for style development, or if you are working on an actual site and not just a product you want to distribute.

I'm working on a large new forum / skin / etc. right now, and I've created a original_templates and customized_templates inside of my project folder. If I want to customize a stock vBulletin template, then I copy it from original into customized, and as soon as I edit it, it will actually edit the template inside vBulletin. This allows us to still export the style as we normally would.

I plan on doing something similar for stock phrases, stylevars, etc. since when working on an actual site, it is crucial to modify this stuff.

Who here would find this useful? If not, I'll keep doing it how I'm doing it and not further develop it.

[Jeff Ledger]

Merging Automatic Template Compiler with VDE - Several Weeks - ATC is a similar modification to VDE, but instead of running things from filesystem and injecting into memory, it actually persists the templates properly into a style. This is fantastic for style development, or if you are working on an actual site and not just a product you want to distribute.

I'm a lot interested in this one, any chance to get a test account ?