Integrating external script with vB

[MoMan]

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:

PHP Code:

// Integrate with vbulletin if requested
    if (defined('VB_CONNECT'))
    {
        define('DISABLE_HOOKS', true);
        define('LOCATION_BYPASS', 1);
        chdir(VB_DIR);
        require_once('global.php');
        chdir(BASE_DIR);
    } 


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

PHP Code:

function logIn()
{
    // Integrate with vbulletin if requested
    if (defined('VB_CONNECT'))
    {
        define('DISABLE_HOOKS', true);
        define('LOCATION_BYPASS', 1);
        chdir(VB_DIR);
        require_once('global.php');
        chdir(BASE_DIR);
    }
}

logIn(); 


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)

[kh99]

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').

[MoMan]

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.

[kh99]

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).

[MoMan]

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:

PHP Code:

extract($GLOBALS, EXTR_REFS); 


--------------- 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.

[kh99]

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.

[souperman]

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.