Preview the first post in a thread first (beta defunct).

One of the things that will happen when you put your mouse pointer on to a hyperlink is put text in a popup box if you put this information into a title line.

For example:

< a href="http://www.yourplace.com" title="your text here">Here ya go< /a >

(the above is just an example to play with without the spaces in the brakets to see how this works)

At any rate. In your forumdisplay.php file right above:

eval("\$forumdisplaybits .= \"".gettemplate('forumdisplaybit')."\";");

put

$post=$DB_site->query_first("SELECT pagetext FROM post WHERE threadid=$thread[threadid] ORDER BY postid");
    $page=iif(strlen($post[pagetext])>500,substr($post[pagetext],0,500)."...",$post[pagetext]);
    $page=bbcodeparse2($page,1,1,1,1); 
    $page=strip_tags($page);

Then in your forumdisplaybit template

look for

<a href="showthread.php?s=$session[sessionhash]&threadid=$thread[threadid]">$thread[title]</a>

and replace this with:

<a href="showthread.php?s=$session[sessionhash]&threadid=$thread[threadid]" title="$page">$thread[title]</a>

The next time you get on your board and open the forumdisplay.php file and list the thread titles in your forums if you put your mouse pointer on the hyperlink to the post you will get a brief display of the first post in the thread to use as a preview.

You can play around with the order size of the pagetext from 500 to whatever you want to have displayed.

If anyone can think of anything to add to this please do. I guarantee I am a very limited coder.

Many thanks go to Chen and Bira for helping me with the coding.

Parker

[Parker Clack]

Note:

I have found that if the post has quotes in it that it will affect the display of the hyperlink on the forumdisplay. You have to change this to single quotes instead of double quotes.

Any work around for that?

Parker

[Wayne Luke]

Doesn't this add one query for every thread shown in forumdisplay. At the default that is 15 new queries shown for every forumdisplay page which can add up a to a lot of resources.

A better solution would be to:

1) Add a new "preview" field to the thread table.
2) Move the code that generates the snippet to the newthread.php file.

PHP Code:

    $page=iif(strlen($message>500,substr($message,0,500)."...",$message); 


Place that above the line that begins:

PHP Code:

      $DB_site->query("INSERT INTO thread 


Alter that same INSERT query to insert the preview as well.

4) Alter the statement that begins with:

PHP Code:

$threads=$DB_site->query(" 


so that is pulls the preview from the database as well.

5) Finally in forumdisplay.php you add the other two lines where you had them to begin with:

PHP Code:

    $page=bbcodeparse2($page,1,1,1,1); 
    $page=strip_tags($page); 


This will give you now new queries while pulling the thread information.

If you have dot folders turned on you can edit the $dotuserid string to pull the message information and get by with less coding and still not have any new queries at display time.

[Symbian.info]

??? What is the good en complete hack? I am lost now..

[TheComputerGuy]

well I think the orginal hack is a great thing, and I think wLuke is saying that for larger boards this would be a good thing to modify...I have it on my test board, and Its going to be included on the new new board for the new year at hand

[Wayne Luke]

That is correct. The original as posted will work fine but if you start running into resource limitations, it can be improved for larger boards. That was my original intent.

[Parker Clack]

wluke:

Great suggestion. I am a poor coder so could you post examples of what you are talking about. The ones you suggested I am afraid I would screw up.

Parker

[Parker Clack]

wluke:

I created a table preview with setting of mediumtext not null in
the database

Then I used:

$page=iif(strlen($message>500,substr($message,0,50 0)."...",$message);

$DB_site->query("INSERT INTO thread (.....,preview) VALUES (..................,'".addslashes(htmlspecialchars ($page))."')");

in the newthread.php file

and

$threads=$DB_site->query("SELECT .....,preview FROM thread..

from forumdisplay.php

and took out the

$post=$DB_site->query_first("SELECT pagetext FROM post WHERE threadid=$thread[threadid] ORDER BY postid");
$page=iif(strlen($post[pagetext])>500,substr($post[pagetext],0,500)."...",$post[pagetext]);
$page=bbcodeparse2($page,1,1,1,1);
$page=strip_tags($page);

and replaced it with:

$page=bbcodeparse2($page,1,1,1,1);
$page=strip_tags($page);

Should that do it?

Parker

[Wayne Luke]

It looks like it. Can't tell until I try it.

I will be finally getting the chance to upgrade SPF to 2.2.1 in the next couple of days. My changelog of modifications I have made is 50K for the user front end alone. I haven't even started applying my changes to the moderators control panel yet.

Once I finish that project, I will probably implement this as well and have the code I write for you to compare with.

[Parker Clack]

wluke:

I look forward to this. One thing though. When I put

$page=iif(strlen($message>500,substr($message,0,50 0)."...",$message);

into the newthread.php I get a parse error at the line it is on.

I will wait and see what you come up with.

While you are at it see if you can get it to pass quotes in the information that is passed because if they are used in the message of the first post it the text for the hyperlink is not displayed.

Parker