Dizkus

I'm thinking about upgrading the Recommend_us Module. My motivation, at least at this point, is to do a better job of "sending" stories. Some of my thoughts:

• I'm thinking about actually sending the home text with a link to "read the whole story". Is there an existing function in PostNuke to convert HTML to plain text? I'm not aware of one, but if someone knows of an effective script for this purpose, I'd appreciate a heads up...it'll save me some time.
  
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• I'm thinking about allowing people to send themselves a copy.
  
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• I'm thinking about allowing people to append a short message.
  
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• I'm thinking about appending a security statement at the footer of each email which explains to people, who feel they've been "victimized", how to contact the site admin and includes specific info which, in addition to the sender's user information, would help to follow-up on abuse of the module.
  
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• I'm thinking about allowing the sender to "select" which of the available languages the email should be written in. Currently, the receiver gets the senders language but that doesn't always make sense.
  
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• I'm thinking about templating it.

Any other ideas? I'd appreciate some feedback on this because this, along with most of the core modules, is overdue for an update/upgrade.

Slugger

http://cvs.postnuke.com/viewcvs.cgi/ValueAddons/Recommend_Us/

That's a start for you, ready templated :)

Any work you could do on the module would be greatly appreciated.

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Regards,
Simon

itbegins.co.uk - Zikula Consulting

Please read the Support Guide

Simon, Thanks. I didn't know about that. Any thoughts on the rest? Slugger

A block? There's not much output in that module, so I expect you could fit it in a block.

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Regards,
Simon

itbegins.co.uk - Zikula Consulting

Please read the Support Guide

To convert HTML to plain text use

1) in PHP $mynewtext = strip_tags($myoriginaltext);
2) in a template

-Mark

Thanks Mark,

Unfortunately that function just strips the tags. I want to convert HTML to plain text.

I suspect I am not the first to be frustrated with inconsistent browser handling of special characters. It bothered me so much I now automatically convert all stories, including special characters, to valid XHTML code. Now, I'd like to be able to email it and, since I am not a big HTML email person, that means going the other way.

It can obviously be done using array_flip() to reverse the original reference, I was just wondering how others had approached this.

This is one of those things that snowballs on you as it comes up in other modules besides the news module.

For example, in numerous places, a story title is displayed with pnVarPrepForDisplay() rather than pnVarPrepHTMLDisplay. In fact the recommend_us module is one such module.

Thanks again Mark and Simon. Your comments are helpful.

Slugger

Aside from HTML what else are you looking to strip? HTML entities can be stripped use html_entity_decode. Perhaps a combination of this and strip_tags will do?

If not then try this.

Any places you find what you suspect to be incorrect usage of any API please raise a bug in the bug tracker.....

-Mark

Whooa Mark! Let's take a step back.

Really, this isn't aproblem. I was just thniking about what needs to be done and how I'd go about it. I hate redoing something someone else has already done...and often done very well. I was thinking maybe someone had already tackled this. I figured no harm in asking.

The tipsntutorials link was more what I was doing. Thanks.

Incorrect usage of the API sounds strong. I tend to build multi-lingual sites and found that, unless I encoded special characters, they tended to get messed up so I started coding them. Unfortunately, while this sounds pretty vanilla, PostNuke really wasn't coded for this. Since, so many modules, from search to archive to sitemaps to recommend_us, also aren't coded to handle Titles in HTML, I've always approached a new installation with these to hack. I don't think of this as a problem so much as a personal preference.

Anyway, I appreciate the pointers.

Slugger

Hey Slugger, this is a bit off track, but if you are looking to make something why not browse the classes at phpclasses.org ? There is a lot of cool stuff there just waiting to be integrated with PostNuke! I have found it is a nice fast way to get a good module coding buzz without getting bogged down with all the prep work :)

-Lobos

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-Lobos
Professional PHP Framework Services: Concept, Development and Deployment

Thanks for the tip. I'll check it out.

Slugger