How to use the plugin system to make template edits?

[jwocky]

I know my way around the vbulletin hooks system and PHP, but I never figured out how to use the plugin system to actually insert data into the HTML templates. I know this is possible as I see some mods do it? Can anyone help me with the basics on how to use the plugin system to make template edits?

thanks!!

[kh99]

Well, if you just want to insert something you can put any variable name you want in the template and make sure it's set in a plugin (before the template is eval'ed of course). But one issue is that some templates are eval'ed in a function, so global variables aren't available unless there's a "global" statement for it in that function. I guess one solution to that is to use an existing global array that you know will be available (like $vbulletin->userinfo), but that's kind of a hack. I don't know if there's an "approved" way. There is a template_hook[] global that is already inserted at certain points in some templates, so maybe that would be a better solution, but I don't know if that's "global" everywhere a template is eval'ed or not.

If you want to delete or alter something that's already there you can do a str_replace (or whatever) on it with something like:

$vbulletin->templatecache['template_name'] = str_replace("search", "replace", $vbulletin->templatecache['template_name']);

although in some situations it can be tricky to know what to match, like we were discussing in this thread a while back: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=255738

Anyway, I hope this helps. I'm certainly not anything like the resident expert on this but I'm sure someone else will add to this or correct me if ncessary.