Miscellaneous Hacks - Digital Point Spy

About
This is a Digg-style spy for seeing what's going on in your forum in realtime.

This is something I originally made about 4 years ago. Now that I rewrote it for vBulletin 4 (it also now uses the bundled YUI for animation), I decided to also wrap it up as a product package and release it for the world to use.

Installation

• Put the spy.php file in your forum folder.
• Put the digitalpoint_spy.js file in your clientscript folder.
• Install the product-digitalpoint_spy.xml product under AdminCP -> Plugins & Products -> Manage Products -> Add/Import Product

You can see a live version in action here:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/spy.php


1.1.0 Update

• Moved JavaScript to external file (works around template parsing bug with early versions of vBulletin 4.0.x).
• XML generation is done with vBulletin's XML Builder class (let it deal with weird characters).
• Switched JavaScript library to from YUI to jQuery (for an end user, it means better animations).
• Changed do=xml to do=feed (works around servers that are overly protective and think they are trying to be hacked and blocking the request).

[digitalpoint]

Originally Posted by res6cue

Ok I found a rather odd issue that hopefully can be resolved:

From time to time, nothing populates on the page for logged in users. However if you log out and check the page as a guest, it populates! I've tried a ton of things to get it to work, including disabling all other mods, to no avail. The digitalpoint_spy table has all the entries in it (as evidenced by the page populating for guests), but it just refuses to populate for logged in users from time to time. The 'Only Include Subscribed Forums' option makes no difference, either it works or it doesn't regardless.

Is there anything that could be causing this behavior? It's driving me nuts, because I really want to keep this mod around, it's extremely handy and our users love it...when it works!

Are you getting any JavaScript or XML errors on the page when it doesn't show the feed?

[Da-Vinci]

Hi DP, great mod, installed and working 100% on 4.1.0 PL2, the only question I have is, are there any options in the Admin CP?

I saw very early on in the thread that somebody mentioned they have there's set to populate the last 10 entries from a historical record, yet I just can't find any options to alter anything anywhere in the ACP.

My forum is fairly busy but has peak times so at certain times of the day it's busier than others, I'd like it to load the last 10 Posts or Threads when the page is opened, obviously if the forum is experiencing lots of Posts/Threads these records would quickly move to the bottom of the page, otherwise they will sit there and show the last 10 entries.

Thanks in advance, installed and rated 5.

[digitalpoint]

As long as you've had posts within the last hour, it should fully populate on the initial page with the 25 last events...

[res6cue]

Originally Posted by digitalpoint

Are you getting any JavaScript or XML errors on the page when it doesn't show the feed?

Nope, the page itself loads fine, it just never populates. Checked in Firefox, Chrome and IE, same results for each. What's odd is that it populates for Guests as well as Users Pending Moderation, but not for Registered Users or any other "full access" accounts. Well, not consistently at least, sometimes it will and sometimes it won't. I just checked it as I was typing this and it wouldn't populate when I was logged in (either under my admin account or my test Registered Users account), however as soon as I logged out it started to populate. :erm:

[Da-Vinci]

Originally Posted by digitalpoint

As long as you've had posts within the last hour, it should fully populate on the initial page with the 25 last events...

Yes I can see more posts now, it must of been because I had only just installed it and was only getting 4 results now, I'm nearer to 25, great hack thanks very much for the share.

[beatyourtruck]

Originally Posted by res6cue

The easiest way to disable the link from showing on the navbar is to go to the Plugin Manager in the AdminCP, find Product : Digital Point Spy, uncheck the Active box for Add Spy Link To Navigation, then save active status. No need to edit any files.

Thank you! Been using vB for years and never really realized there were options in there for me to play with Fixed.

[OlijO]

Hi everybody
I try to use it to my forum vB4.1.0PL2
I obtain a white page, no message.
In the AdminCP, is there any option to enable ? I can't see any option...

[Paul.]

I get an error.. I'm sure it's something that can easily be fixed?

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '{', expecting ')' in D:\root\root\root\root\Forum\includes\class_core.p hp(4010) : eval()'d code on line 32

[alfanexus]

Originally Posted by digitalpoint

No, blog entries lack the hooks necessary to make it work for them. Plus, how often would you really see a new blog entry stream by compared to a new post?

Actually about 40-50 percent of posts on my site are blogs So I guess it depends of the kind of site.

[New Joe]

I have posted in the past on this but here we go.

I have been using the vBIspy one for a long time, it works out of the box and never stops working.
I would like to change over to this one but at this present time I am unable to as this one still doesn't work right.

I installed this again today.
I opened up 2 tabs.
One with the vBIspy and one with this mod.

Both were working and posts and threads up dating fine.
But when there was about an hour between posts this one stopped up dating but the vBispy continued to up date after the hour.

So it looks like if there are no post after an hour then this one stops working, where as the vBIspy keeps on working.

I am sure there is a simple way to have this one do the same as the vBIsy mod.
I will wait for digitalpoint to get back to me with the answer.