Forum Extensions

[jimibt]

hi pat (or should i say 'stranger'!! :))

no, the forums upgrades are all tbh architecture based. however, my implmentation has broken away a bit and ties forums to categories. to this end, i used the telerik tabstrip to 'represent' these in an ajaxified kind of way. i have to add here that my view on ajax is that of any other tool, it should be almost transparent, so as not to overwhelm the functionality. to this end, telerik have been great as the stuff just 'works'. in my forums, i just have a repeater control (key on catid) which loops over my categories and is very extensible. the only drawback being that this code is not 'open source' friendly given that a telerik licence is required. at some point, i will work out an ms ajax version to share (the reasons for sharing/open source are very compelling, especially if you have the aim of making the tbh architecture very widespread).

so, in a nutshell, that is the main ajax functionality, other than in my template which uses an ms ajax wrapper around the main container.

so, what have you been up to then??

jimi

http://www.originaltalent.com

[plb]

I have strayed rather far afield. I did an Access development contract and then a Flash contract. I am studying for my Microsoft developer certifications.

If you haven't watched it the telerik video on how to make a forum in one hour is very interesting. See:
http://www.screencast.com/users/Tang...3-cf547c236f31

Architecturally it is quite like TBH in that it uses the MS membership files, a base class for web pages and five SQL Server tables. Of course it uses its proprietary tools not the MS equivalents.

It has a nice feature with the use of the tree control for topics. I think this makes a lot of sense.

BTW you can code up a forum from scratch in one hour if you already have a couple dozen code snippets that you can just paste in. Also this guy codes at 100 mph. I suspect he might have practiced a little.

Pat

http://weboperahouse.com
http://www.boyleed.com

[plb]

Just another note for those of you not in California.

The LA fires are only about half as big as the Oakland fires - the second of which came within 3 house of my house. We lost over 3,400 homes in the big one.

At the time (1991)there was no mention of global warming as now seems so popular with the impressionable. The idea that more National Guard troops would make a difference is also goofy. I was in the National Guard for six years. The only thing I could have done would have been to shoot the fire with my rifle - that was my training.

In the Oakland fire nothing anyone did - fireman or National Guard - made much difference as long as the winds blew. Then the weather changed - the hot froen winds stopped blowing and the fog came in. At that time the fire suddenly became very easy to control.

Pat

PS - Happy St. Crispin's day

http://weboperahouse.com
http://www.boyleed.com

[jimibt]

pat,

i'll make sure to watch that video. just need to 'learn' how to cut 'n' paste like the old silent movies i suppose :)

jimi

http://www.originaltalent.com

[krainov]

Finally, I have my version of forums's categories...
You can see it here http://terminal2.ru/ShowForums.aspx . Still have several bugs to fix, but the main part of work have done.

[ViagraFalls]

Nice work, krainov. I'm almost done finishing up my own :)

http://entropia-online.blogspot.com/

[ViagraFalls]

I actually ran into a minor problem when implementing a repeater wrapped around the gridview on "ManageForums.aspx". Because I use the repeater, and put the GridView into an Itemtemplate of the repeater, the page no longer is able to use the ControlParameter for the select of one of the datasources.

I managed to get the page running by commenting out the parameter, and I plan on just hooking up the parameter through code. Just wondering how others have solved this?

Peter

http://entropia-online.blogspot.com/

[Maxxim]

For my manage forums I don't have a repeater, either a gridview... I have a treevie because I have 3 level forums...

But you can what you want in a easy way:

If you bind your gridview with categories... And want the repeater for forums use a codebehind datasource for your repeater like:

<repeater id="..." ... OnItemCommand="rptSubForums_ItemCommand"  DataSource='<%# GetSubForums(CType(Eval("ID"), Integer)) %>'>

//Code-Behind:
        Protected Function GetSubForums(ByVal categoryID As Integer) As List(Of BLL.Forums.Forum)
            Return BLL.Forums.Forum.GetSubForums(categoryID) 'forumsByCateg
        End Function

[ViagraFalls]

Maxxim,

That basically was the path I would take, with one addition: I'm pondering storing the collection of forums in a datatable, to avoid unneccessary extra calls to the database. I'm not sure if I can do the same in cache, but I'll most likely do some testing to verify whuich method works best for me.

That will require me to motivate myself to start working on this again, though :p

Cheers,

Peter

http://entropia-online.blogspot.com/

[Maxxim]

datatable?

How many levels you going to make for forums?

If You only use categories+Forums you can retrieve them all from the DB and then catch them all!
Because your showForums Page will show them all!!

Something like this:

Public Shared Function GetForums() As List(Of Forum) 
            Dim forums As List(Of Forum)
            Dim key As String = "Forums_Forums"

            If BaseForum.Settings.EnableCaching AndAlso Not IsNothing(BizObject.Cache(key)) Then
                forums = CType(BizObject.Cache(key), List(Of Forum))
            Else
                Dim recordset As List(Of ForumsForumDetails) = SiteProvider.Forums.GetForums()
                forums = GetForumListFromForumDetailsList(recordset)
                BaseForum.CacheData(key, forums)
            End If
            Return forums
        End Function


        Public Shared Function GetForums(ByVal categoryID As Integer) As List(Of Forum)
            Dim forums As List(Of Forum)
            Dim key As String = "Forums_Forums_" & categoryID.ToString()
            Dim allForums As List(Of Forum) = BLL.Forums.Forum.GetForums
            forums = New List(Of Forum)
            For Each forumCateg As Forum In allForums
                If forumCateg.CategoryID = categoryID And forumCateg.ParentID = 0 Then
                    forums.Add(forumCateg)
                End If
            Next
            BaseForum.CacheData(key, forums)
            Return forums
        End Function

With this code you only make one single connection to your database!

I don't know Why do you want to use datatables