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Developer FAQ

25 Topics 201 Posts

What is the Developer FAQ?

This category is meant to showcase developer questions that have been answered in-depth by other forum users. We collect these topics in this category because they have been asked multiple times, and the answers to them are sometimes more complicated than a single line or two of explanation/code.

Do you have an idea for a topic we should include in the Developer FAQ? Let us know via chat (or reply to the topic you'd like to see migrated here).

  • NodeBB + ReactJS

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    eeeeeE
    I think you answered my point, by agreeing there are issues. I didn't even attempt to deploy nodebb, I had problems with much smaller projects! Nextjs routing was going through a change of design at the time, so perhaps that is less confusing now, but there were multiple other headaches. I would get build errors and issues with package management.
  • Total vote count on topic list

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    phenomlabP
    @baris updated to 3.7.2 and now just waiting for the plugin to be updated.
  • How do I add custom user fields to my theme?

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    julianJ
    @solmak for benchpress specific syntax check here https://github.com/benchpressjs/benchpressjs/tree/master/docs
  • Why does nodebb check dependencies programmatically?

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    o              oO
    Yeah thanks guys, the key was copying the package.json file out of the install folder (copying, not moving, because install/package.json is then checked during build). Now everything can be installed in one command.
  • 4 Votes
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    barisB
    Translations are pulled regularly into the develop branch so whenever the next minor version is release ie 3.6.0 they become available. See https://community.nodebb.org/topic/17189/how-do-i-retrieve-the-latest-translations-from-transifex-without-waiting-for-misty for manual commands
  • How do I create a registration interstitial?

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    S
    @julian said in How do I create a registration interstitial?: The hook is fired on POST /register so that the user can be redirected to the interstitial during the registration process. So you do need to have it respond there in order for the flow to work. Interesting, the flow still seems to work perfectly (the custom interstitials do show up on redirect to /register/complete) with the following code right at the beginning of the hook handler: const url = data.req.originalUrl; if (!url.startsWith("/register/complete")) { return data; } How is that possible?
  • Threaded Discussions

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    barisB
    See https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/issues/7319#issuecomment-487588369
  • How can I backdate topics and posts (for migration purposes)?

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    julianJ
    @шЫкель-грубый said in How can I backdate topics and posts (for migration purposes)?: I'll also try to comment date changing in sources. I'm not familiar with JS but it looks obviously enough. Yes, this is probably the most direct solution. It'll get your script working with the correct timestamps, all you have to do is comment out that line in the file, and restart NodeBB.
  • How do I create a settings page for my plugin?

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    Irfan BabarI
    thank you for this.
  • How do I create a user profile route for my plugin?

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    julianJ
    Your plugin may want to expose some user-specific options, and to accomplish that, you'll want to create a page accessible from within their user profile. In Harmony, plugin-added pages are added to the left-hand sidebar: [image: 1674667256553-ce07dc7d-e8f3-45a9-ac73-72f1f7309af2-image.png] In Persona, plugin-added pages are behind the overflow menu: [image: 1674667224469-af0633f5-175d-45ff-802b-342a0885dd68-image.png] You'll need to add listeners to two hooks, and modify your page template accordingly. static:app.load Live example You'll need to specify a route in the user profile using this hook. In it, note the accountMiddlewares block, which contains some common middlewares that are sensible defaults. You'll need middleware.buildAccountData in order to retrieve some boilerplate data that all account routes need. filter:user.profileMenu Live example You'll then want to specify the menu option, including label, icon, and visibility options. visibility allows you to specify which users can see the option (e.g. self only, admins only, etc.) The template In your template for the user page, you'll want to prefix it with <!-- IMPORT partials/account/header.tpl --> and suffix it with <!-- IMPORT partials/account/footer.tpl -->. These two lines will wrap your template content with the theme-specific structure. For example, in Harmony, a sidebar is used in the accounts pages. The header and footer partials will ensure they are also present in your template. The middleware.buildAccountData middleware you added in the first step will ensure the data necessary is present.
  • Place a widget/ad after the first post

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    D
    Awesome! Thank you.
  • How to add main post content of topic to topic lists?

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    nullpointerN
    @baris thank you! I'll try your solution and update here
  • How to restrict access to categories based on outside privileges?

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    julianJ
    Let's say you have your own site and member database, with its own gated access to content, and you want to mimic this sort of arrangement with your forum. e.g. On member site, you have free users and paid users, and you want to only allow access to a couple super special categories on community site to paid users, while free users get the regular set of categories. The good news is, the Session Sharing plugin has had support for this since 2018! You'll want to enable the options in the session sharing plugin: [image: 1668525497001-2022-11-15_09-49.png] You can opt to only add users to groups, only remove users from groups, or both. You can also specify which groups that the automatic group syncing applies to Once enabled, you need only update your shared cookie to contain a groups property, which is of type Array. This array contains the group names in NodeBB that the user should be a part of. If group leaving is enabled, then the user will be removed from any groups that are not in this array, upon login/revalidation. Once you have your group memberships sorted out, you'll want to restrict access to specific categories based on user group membership. You can do that from the ACP > Manage > Privileges page. Simply remove access for the registered-users groups from your choice of categories, and grant those viewing/posting privileges to the paid users group.
  • What are all the options for `./nodebb upgrade`?

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    omegaO
    Cool and for context a link to the upgrade doc section - https://docs.nodebb.org/configuring/upgrade/
  • Plugin DB Search - Limitation?

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    I would really like to get this working. Does anyone have any thoughts on why this code above might not work? The board was converted from phpbb using a plugin. Is it possible that left something behind that is breaking the code shared above?
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    julianJ
    @stevefan1999-personal Considerations when scaling NodeBB are detailed here: https://docs.nodebb.org/configuring/scaling/ ... but possibly not in the most digestable way. In summary, here's what you need: Redis configured in config.json so it will be used as pubsub and for storing user sessions (volatile data) One of the workers needs isPrimary set to true in config.json, conversely, the other instances need jobsDisabled set to false For socket.io, you will need to make sure to use a ip hashing strategy when routing requests from the load balancer. A typical round-robin style means the socket.io handshake will fail since it ends up hitting different servers.
  • Whats the Workflow to save User Input from a Form

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    Adrian Lukas SteinA
    Okay mate thanks for the info, working fine now thanks a lot
  • What do the various dashboard analytics stats mean?

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    julianJ
    I'm assuming you're referring to the chart in the main admin control panel? [image: Bpz7XsD.png] The two main analytics tracked are pageviews and unique visitors. Page views are fairly self-explanatory, one page load or transition to a new page counts as a new page view. Unique visitors is based on the IP address, and so every time a new IP address shows up in that hour, the count is incremented by one. We also track unique visitors on a daily, weekly, monthly, and all-time basis, for the numbers here: [image: qwVViau.png] The "registered", "guest", and "bot" variants for pageviews increment alongside each pageview, but depending on whether the user is logged in (or not), or whether that request came from a bot. "registered" and "guest" should add up to the total pageviews, since you're either registered or not. "bots" are usually also guests, but we use some basic logic to detect whether they're a bot or not (probably user-agent string) For a variety of reasons, the "bot" count is not always predictable, since some bots are rather obscure, or fudge their user-agent strings, so take this number with a grain of salt. I hope that answers your questions, let me know if there's anything else you'd like to know.
  • I'm getting a session mismatch error when logging in!

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    julianJ
    This topic was created as an entry in the Developer FAQ. Respond below if you have additional information to add re: SSO or other session-sharing implementations. The common causes for a session mismatch error are usually one of the following: 1. Mis-configured URL parameter in your config.json file If you have a misconfigured url value in your config.json file, the cookie may be saved incorrectly (or not at all), causing a session mismatch error. Please ensure that the link you are accessing your site with and the url defined match. 2. Improper/malformed cookieDomain set in ACP Sometimes admins set this value realising that they probably don't need to set it at all. The default is perfectly fine. If this is set, you'll want to revert the setting by editing your database directly: Redis: hdel config cookieDomain MongoDB: db.objects.update({ _key: "config" }, { $set: { "cookieDomain": "" } }); 3. Missing X-Forwarded-Proto header from nginx/apache If you are using a reverse proxy, you will need to have nginx pass a header through to NodeBB so it correctly determines the correct cookie secure property. In nginx, you will need to add the directive like so: location / { ... proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme; ... }
  • How do I log into NodeBB from a separate app/SSO?

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    julianJ
    This topic was created as an entry in the Developer FAQ. Respond below if you have additional information to add re: SSO or other session-sharing implementations. The recommended method of sharing sessions between two separate and distinct applications is through OAuth2. We recommend this approach because NodeBB maintains its own user records, so that we can keep track of user-related metrics and other data. Relying on another database would be tricky, prone to breaking, and quite possibly dangerous. Luckily, it's quite straightforward to get things working with OAuth2! The first step is getting your application to expose an OAuth2 endpoint. If you're running a Node.js based app, you can use a module called OAuth2orize. Once that is set up, you'll want to take a look at the SSO plugin skeleton for customised OAuth deployments -- nodebb-plugin-sso-oauth. You'll take this plugin, fork it, and modify it to communicate with your OAuth endpoint. Once everything is working properly, you should be able to register and log in/out via your web app.