Major Additions - Share users database among many forums

This is a feature requested many times, and we are still waiting, so I released a patch to be able to run many forums with the same user database.

This is an EXPERIMENTAL PATCH I'm running on my forums.

--- ../../../private/upload/includes/class_core.php     2008-07-10 11:17:32.000000000 +0200
+++ class_core.php      2008-07-11 17:44:20.000000000 +0200
@@ -405,6 +405,33 @@
                $this->connection_recent =& $link;
                $this->querycount++;

+               $shared_tables = Array("user","useractivation","userban","usertitle","userchangelog","usertextfield","userfield","usergroup","userlist","usernote","profilevisitor","reputation","reputationlevel","spamlog","strikes","pm","pmreceipt","pmtext","avatar","profilefield");
+
+               $main_prefix = "FP_";
+               foreach ($shared_tables as $shared_table)
+               {
+                       $orig = TABLE_PREFIX.$shared_table;
+                       $dst  = $main_prefix.$shared_table;
+
+                       $this->sql = str_replace($orig." ",$dst." "  ,$this->sql);
+                       $this->sql = str_replace($orig.".",$dst."."  ,$this->sql);
+                       $this->sql = str_replace($orig."\r",$dst."\r",$this->sql);
+                       $this->sql = str_replace($orig."\n",$dst."\n",$this->sql);
+                       $this->sql = str_replace($orig."\t",$dst."\t",$this->sql);
+
+               }
+

                if ($queryresult = $this->functions[$buffered ? 'query' : 'query_unbuffered']($this->sql, $link))
                {

You can add "session" to $shared_tables if you want to share your sessions among forums under the same domain (Thanks Lionel)

This is only useful for new forums joining anothers one user database.

Requirements:

• An old forum where all users are.
• Sharing the same database, using diferent prefixes for tables (TABLE_PREFIX)

For example: Imagine we have FORUM_A , FORUM_B, and FORUM_C each one with their respective licenses.

FORUM A has table prefix FA_ in database, FORUM_B has FB_ and FORUM_C has FC_

FORUM A is the main, and older forum, where we have all our users.

then we would install FORUM_B and FORUM_C normally, using the same database that FORUM_A uses, but setting up their own table prefixes.


once FB_ and FC_ are installed then we go patching class_core.php from FORUM_B and FORUM_C setting up $main_prefix = "FA_"; so they use FORUM_A for shared tables.

Possible problems:

• memcached issues?, not sure
• avatar/signature pics/etc issues when storage is set to disk.
• more to come...

Author: Optimizacion Web

[rsuplido]

Originally Posted by mangel.ajo

Uhh, I have to check that.

For me it's working:

If I search here for "pruebecita" it works
http://www.economiahoy.es/foro/search.php

this forum is using the user database from:

http://www.foropymes.es/foro/

Could you give some details of your problem?

It seems like when it is set to FULLSEARCH it doesn't work. I decided to use the key words option and it works now.

[ps2wiz]

Originally Posted by rsuplido

Store the avatars back to the database and add 'customavatar' to the list.

Thank you very much, that did the trick.

[lovevn]

It works well but I have some problems:
-Private message text is broken in the slave board.
-User's title is broken in the slave board.
-signature is broken in the slave board

My board is using utf-8 charset(vietnamese languages)

[mangel.ajo]

Originally Posted by ps2wiz

I got it up and running and every thing seems to function perfect besides one thing.

I store my avatars on disk (file system) instead of the database storage. Anyone know how to properly link this? I am scratching my head on this, as avatars do not show up.

Yes, that's one of the things that cannot be used with this patch "directly"

If you can enter the machine as root you could make a hard-link from the secondary forum avatars directory to the main one using "ln" (I'm assuming it's a U*IX/Linux machine)

[mangel.ajo]

Hello loven!

That seems strange since str_replace shouldn't affect the strings encoding.

Could you please check if both forums are running using the same encoding? The problem could be there...

Could you provide the urls for us to test?

Originally Posted by lovevn

It works well but I have some problems:
-Private message text is broken in the slave board.
-User's title is broken in the slave board.
-signature is broken in the slave board

My board is using utf-8 charset(vietnamese languages)

[lovevn]

Originally Posted by mangel.ajo

Hello loven!

That seems strange since str_replace shouldn't affect the strings encoding.

Could you please check if both forums are running using the same encoding? The problem could be there...

Could you provide the urls for us to test?

Hello
Thanks for your reply.
Both forums are running the same ecodeing. However, in my main board
I turn this off

$config['Mysqli']['charset'] = 'utf8';

And on my slave board(which is vbulletin chinese version) it is on.

I try to turn this off on the slave board but I got some error.

Could you tell me how to fix on this case?

Thanks again

[ps2wiz]

Originally Posted by mangel.ajo

Yes, that's one of the things that cannot be used with this patch "directly"

If you can enter the machine as root you could make a hard-link from the secondary forum avatars directory to the main one using "ln" (I'm assuming it's a U*IX/Linux machine)

Yeah, I just transferred them back into the database and added "customavatar" to the list of shared tables.

I also let people host their signature pics on my forum. So I also added "sigpic" to the list of shared tables.

[ps2wiz]

Also, I figured if both board share the same PMs, then why not visitor messages too?

Just add:

"visitormessage","visitormessage_hash"

And you are good to go

[Zate]

Interesting way of doing it.

we've been running shared users for about 3+ years now and it has some minor "issues".. we initially did ours with PHP edits, then eventually by static links.. works well but has some issues with groups not updating sometimes. Currently looking at what modifications I'd need to make the functions affecting registration, changing password, changing username, changing email address... ideally i'd love to just share username, password and email address, and nothing else. Much to do.

[z4media]

Hello

I´am very intersted in this modification, but there is no howto.

Please explain the implementation of this mod.

Where do i put the code in the class_core.php, btw. in which line ?

thx

Flo