Customizing VSa - Chatbox with user avatars

[MarkFL]

[S]Hello all,

I am using vBulletin 4.2.1 on my local server as my dev site, and once done, I will go live with this on the forum I help administrate which runs vBulletin 4.2.2 patch level 2.

I am doing some custom hacks to Valter's great chatbox, and I am stumped on how to display user avatars. We use the file system to store our avatars, so I cannot use the image.php?u=userid method.

So, I have written a plugin, hook location is parse_templates, with the plugin PHP code:

PHP Code:

require_once('./includes/functions_user.php');
$avatar_url = fetch_avatar_url($vbulletin->userinfo[$vsacb_msg_box.userid]);

$avatar = $avatar_url[0];
$user_avatar = '<img src="'.$avatar.'" border="0" width="40" style="vertical-align: middle" />';

vB_Template::preRegister('vsa_chatbox_bit',array('user_avatar' => $user_avatar)); 

Now, what I get is my avatar in every posted message, instead of the avatars of the users who actually posted the various messages. Can anyone tell me what I am missing? [/S]

I found the solution to my problem!

Instead of creating a new plugin, I hacked an existing one. I opened the plugin titled "VSa - ChatBox - MN" and located the line:

PHP Code:

$vsacb_msg_box_parsed = str_replace('\'', ''', $vsacb_bbparser->do_parse($vsacb_msg_box_styled,1,$vsacb_smilies_onoff,1,1,1)); 

And after that, inserted the code:

PHP Code:

require_once('./includes/functions_user.php');
$avatar_url = fetch_avatar_url($vsacb_msg_box['userid']);

$avatar = $avatar_url[0];

if (!$avatar)
{
    $avatar = './images/misc/unknown.gif';
}

$user_avatar = '<img src="'.$avatar.'" border="0" width="48" style="vertical-align: middle" />';

vB_Template::preRegister('vsa_chatbox_bit',array('user_avatar' => $user_avatar)); 

Save the plugin, and then in the template "vsa_chatbox_bit" you may use "{vb:raw user_avatar}" to display the user avatars.

[Lynne]

Thank you for posting the solution to your problem. Hopefully it will help someone else who has the same issue.

[chikuru]

Thank you for this! I was also trying to code this.

[M.C.]

thanks, great addon!

[TheLastSuperman]

Moved to articles . Also made second post the first post then pasted old first post code into second with strike-through - for reference only .

[GHRake]

This is an awesome article, thank you!

In the img tag I set height="20" width="20" and it looks great with 14px text height



And if anyone was wondering where to place {vb:raw user_avatar} inside the vsa_chatbox_bit template, find:

PHP Code:

{vb:raw vsacb_msg_box.musername} 

And replace with:

PHP Code:

{vb:raw user_avatar} {vb:raw vsacb_msg_box.musername} 

[MarkFL]

I kind of went wild when I was learning javascript and made quite a few changes to the chat:

[GHRake]

Originally Posted by MarkFL

I kind of went wild

Yes you did! Site looks great BTW

[MarkFL]

Originally Posted by GHRake

Yes you did! Site looks great BTW

Thank you! The style was done by a hired designer, and we have added a lot of bells and whistles.