Show Thread Enhancements - AME 2.0 -Auto Media Embedding for posts, blogs, visitor and group messsages

From the creators of French and Toast comes a sweet and sticky enchanement to the New York Times best-seller: AME - Auto Media Embedding

AME 2.0 - The Embedder Strikes Back!

AME has won Mod of the Month for Spetember 08. Thanks!

Note that 2.5 Gold has been released. Click Here.

Discussions for AME 2.5 RC 1 start here

AME 2.0 is the next version of the "Mod of the Month" winning media embedder that:

• Allows user to simply 'paste' in a URL (i.e. a youtube link) without needing to know any special tags. However instead of displaying just the URL, it will show the media within the post
• is lightweight as it does all of her chores without the overhead of having 1 bbcode per pattern or trying to parse a post every single time it gets displayed with a bunch of patterns. AME radically reduces overhead and speeds up processing. The only time ame will kick in is after creating a new post or after editing an existing one (or if an ame tag is found)
• is extensible. She allows you to add, edit, delete, import and export patterns. That way you can decide which services to support, how they should look and then share them with others! At time of typing this, there are over 150 media sites that have been contributed by vBulletin.org members
• can extract the title (requires your server to allow url wrappers with fetch_contents)
• can extract embed code from sites whose URLs do not contain sufficient information to embed the video
• can rebuild your old posts to convert your 'other' mediaish tags into URL tags.
• can rebuild your old posts, blogs, comments, visitor and social group messages to convert URL tags into ame tags where needed
• can convert her codes BACK to url codes so you're not stuffed with a bunch of dead tags if you uninstall!
• won't uglify your site by having videos appear in quotes, php, code or html blocks (blech!)
• can be globally disabled
• can be excluded from forums
• can exclude usergroups
• can be toggled on/off per post, blog, comment, visitor and social group message
• would cook dinner for you if she had arms
• can wrap the output in a 'container' with original URL
• has a super comprehensive admincp help system. Yes, I actually took the bloody time to add all the info you need into vB's admincp help system. If you ask a silly question in this thread that is addressed in the help system, you will be taunted.
• is fully phrased
• has hooks around integral operations so you can extend it
• Supports embedding in vbBlog, Visitor Messages and Social Groups.
• Can be disabled in one or more of the following sections: Posts, vbBlog, Visitor Messages and/or Social Groups

Apart from the additional areas of support around vbBlog, Visitor Messages and Social Groups, little has changed about AME since version 1.0 released over a year ago. I cleaned up a few minor bugs, trimmed and updated the default definitions.

Which sites are supported?

At time of counting this, there are about 170 sites supported. But I have only included a few common standards as default (yahoo, youtube, myspace, google and Amazon). Why only these? AME was designed with its own import and export system that enables users to create or modify definitions and share them with the community. This keeps the system lightweight, customisable and saves us all from having to upgrade every time a media site changes their URL structure or if I add another site.

Check out the 'add ons' section of this post below to see availible add-ons.



Installation/Upgrade

• Upload the contents of the forums folder into your forums directory and import the product-ame.xml file into your product manager (if upgrading, choose 'yes' to overwrite previous installation).
• After installation, make sure that the system is on (admincp->AME CP->Settings)
• Then you may want to try to rebuild old URLs via the tools option.

Big thanks goes out to all those in the community that have supported this mod. Especially Digital Jedi Who has created about 155 definitions for this system alone!

Change Log


2.0.2 - fixed added slashes in quote blocks (DoH!), vm advanced error and incrimented product version. You need to replace include/ame_bb_code.php and re-import the product-ame.xml to upgrade
2.0.1 - fixed missing backslashes in code blocks

2.5 Pre-Release information

Attached to this post is pre-release of version 2.5

2.5 is a pretty major upgrade from the 2.0 series and adds the following functionality to 2.0:

• New in Beta 3 - Validation ability. This will help prevent media being embedded that can not be embedded (i.e. youtube videos that the author has stipulated can not be shown off of youtube). This option requires the extraction option to be turned on and a valid validation regexp. I have included one in the default youtube version. When a video on you tube gets embedded, but the author doesnt allow embedding, a link (with icon) is shown instead.
• Ability to prevent non authorised usergroups from viewing (see Readme file in zip for more info)
• Usergroup permissions (edit usergroup to adjust edit/view permissions)
• Template driven system - uses templates now instead of 1 master replacement (see Readme file in zip for more info)
• Signatures supported
• Different sizes and template configurations for each supported zone (posts, blogs, groups, visitor messages and signatures)
• A couple new hooks (Mainly to support a future add on for AME media in profiles)
• Notfication system (similar to vB's to check for errors)
• Definition keys for easier updating of definitions and to use in templates
• File caching system which radically reduces processing
• And more that I cant think of off the top of my head!

Note that while previous definitions will work with the new system, they will not be sizeable by zone. Since DJ helped with the private beta testing, I am sure he will be releasing 2.5 versions of his definitions soon.

Please note that 2.5 is a pre-release so there will be issues. If you want more stability, use 2.x until this version becomes gold FWIW: The only items currently outstanding are to add some missing admincp help. The rest is working as intended as far as I can tell

nJoy

[The Geek]

Just as an FYI:

I have completed the alpha of the next version which includes a lot more functionality based on user requests.

• It prevents HTML entities within the title (i.e. &amp
• It supports signatures
• It uses templates instead of the open and close setting. The templates can be specified per zone (i.e. signature, blog, posts, etc...) and obviously customised per style. Remember though; because of vB's postcache, using conditionals will not always produce anticipated results (i.e. a conditional display based on usergroup).
• It supports sizing based on what zone you are in (i.e. one size for signatures and one size for posts)
• It has an option to file cache the definitions for faster processing (especially with sites that have A LOT of definitions)

What I have left to do:

• Add the new features into the admincp for easier controlling
• I may add a key column to the definitions to prevent duplication of definitions and for easier updating of defaults.

Though this version will still support all the existing definitions, some changes will have to be made to support the new areas of functionality. Namely the ability to adjust the size of the media. Right now, the width and height attribute is included in the embed code. While this is fine, it means that you can't specify the size of the media with the new features. To support the new sizing options, the width and height attributes within the embed code will need to be changed from width="xxx" and height="xxx" to $ameinfo[width] and $ameinfo[height] respectively in both the object tag and the embed tag. I may also do a tool to try and automate this for users, we will just have to see how much time I have

Anyhooo... I have spent a great deal of my vacation time retooling this mod so I am going to go take a break and catch some sun with an ice cold beer for awhile (vacation is almost over!). I may get some time later today or tomorrow morning to release a beta, but then again, I may not

nJoy

[Sunsetdriver]

Page keeps loading during installation.
My post table has more than 1,2 millions records. How much would it take to add the index?

[Digital Jedi]

Originally Posted by popular

does this mod work with signatures? hmmm doesn't work for sigs and daily motion doesnt seem supported =(

Sig functionality, if you read just a few posts between yours and mine, will be added by The Geek in the next version. Sounds like pretty soon.

Daily Motion is indeed supported, including all it's foreign language counterparts and 150+ other sites. You just need to get the definitions from the Add-On to this thread.

Originally Posted by GrandHolyKing

What about some popular sites such as the following
www.play.com
www.game.co.uk
www.hmv.co.uk

Members on my forum regularly use these sites when ordering stuff so it would be great to have them on the list.

As it stands, this is one beautiful mod that trumps all others! Good job!

I can add them to the list for the next update cycle, but I'll have to make sure they can convert before making any promises. That said, keep on eye on the Add-On thread for the next update.

Originally Posted by The Geek

Just as an FYI:

I have completed the alpha of the next version which includes a lot more functionality based on user requests.

• It prevents HTML entities within the title (i.e. &amp
• It supports signatures
• It uses templates instead of the open and close setting. The templates can be specified per zone (i.e. signature, blog, posts, etc...) and obviously customised per style. Remember though; because of vB's postcache, using conditionals will not always produce anticipated results (i.e. a conditional display based on usergroup).
• It supports sizing based on what zone you are in (i.e. one size for signatures and one size for posts)
• It has an option to file cache the definitions for faster processing (especially with sites that have A LOT of definitions)

What I have left to do:

• Add the new features into the admincp for easier controlling
• I may add a key column to the definitions to prevent duplication of definitions and for easier updating of defaults.

Though this version will still support all the existing definitions, some changes will have to be made to support the new areas of functionality. Namely the ability to adjust the size of the media. Right now, the width and height attribute is included in the embed code. While this is fine, it means that you can't specify the size of the media with the new features. To support the new sizing options, the width and height attributes within the embed code will need to be changed from width="xxx" and height="xxx" to $ameinfo[width] and $ameinfo[height] respectively in both the object tag and the embed tag. I may also do a tool to try and automate this for users, we will just have to see how much time I have

Anyhooo... I have spent a great deal of my vacation time retooling this mod so I am going to go take a break and catch some sun with an ice cold beer for awhile (vacation is almost over!). I may get some time later today or tomorrow morning to release a beta, but then again, I may not

nJoy

You have a strange way of vacationing, but I like it. Rest up dude.

That's size variable sounds like a major dream come true to me.

[popular]

niceeee sounds awesome (Y)

[Mikhal]

On line 82 of the automediaembed_admin, it would be very helpful if you used the long php tag' <?php' instead of '<?' in future releases. My webserver has problems displaying php files with the short tags. Also, that's the only place where you use the short tag.

Besides that, the mod is working great. Thanks for updating it!

[MindStar]

Originally Posted by MindStar

Excellent!

Would you consider using cURL instead of file_get_contents to get the title of the video file?

* we have disabled file_get_contents on our server due to the security risks with using file_get_contents.

Here's a link to an example of using cURL to replace a call to file_get_contents

http://uk3.php.net/manual/en/functio...ents.php#82255

Originally Posted by The Geek

Ill look into it

FYI, I just tried replacing the call to file_get_contents with a call to the curl_get_file_contents and copy&pasted the function from the above php.net webpage and it worked

[The Geek]

@Mindstar - Ill add the option to curl or fetch for you

@Mikhal - I updated the next version with the php tag for

@DJ - if you can update your XML work with the size changes, Ill happily send you a pre-release to do so. That will save me the time of writing a conversion tool

@Sunset - If the page is just reloading the first, it usually means it is on test mode. If it isnt and it is taking ages... make sure you turn off the extraction method as that means each match will be trying to fetch the destination title (which can take some time)

Hope that is everyone

[soulface]

When I post any youtube link in any profile's visitor messege, It's shows double...

[Darat]

Anyone got some HTML code handy that I could use to put the videos in a collapsible box?

[The Geek]

Originally Posted by Darat

Anyone got some HTML code handy that I could use to put the videos in a collapsible box?

If you can hang on until next release, It will support templates which will be easy to add collapse support (heck, I might even do it for you )