So I've been working with NodeBB for a while now and am familiar with several concepts, but one thing I'm not sure about.

If I want to add data to the "global scope" before render. How would I do that?

I know how to get data to the page templates, but that doesn't carry over into the global templates, like the sidebar menu.

How can I, for instance, fetch my categories and place them in the sidebar?

I'm getting all available categories for a user with categories.getCategoriesByPrivilege. Then I append to it with
categories.getRecentTopicReplies. I'm not getting what I want, only the top post (reply).

What I want is the following; a list of all topics with recent posts (preferably with a max limit in time range), within my available categories. What the client I'm working for want is a feed type thing with all recent activity displayed in one single flow. Then I will also drill down into specific categories but I think I've got that covered.

This is where I'm at so far:

Controllers.renderFeedPage = function (req, res) {
	if (!req.uid) {
		res.render('feed', {});
	}
	let categoriesData;
	let tree;

	async.waterfall([
		(next) => {
			categories.getCategoriesByPrivilege('categories:cid', req.uid, 'find', next);
		},
		(_categoriesData, next) => {
			categoriesData = _categoriesData;

			tree = categories.getTree(categoriesData, 0);
			categories.getRecentTopicReplies(categoriesData, req.uid, next);
		},
		() => {
			const data = {
				title: meta.config.homePageTitle || '[[pages:home]]',
				categories: tree,
			};
			res.render('feed', data);
		},
	]);
};

I haven't found a good example from the forum and I'm reading source code at this point.

If anyone has done something similar I would really appreciate the input and a nudge in the right direction.

Thanks!

Turned out I was fetching the post data wrong. I was using getPostData when i should've been using getPostsByPids.

@baris Just what I needed. Thanks a lot!!

@baris Just what I needed. Thanks a lot!!

Thank you @baris for your reply. I know I can append to the templates data. My issue is that I can't access that data in the mobile menu (on the left).

I'm making a custom menu with a hierarchy of categories and also grouped in open and private. So I create that hierarchy in backend (with the hook you suggested) and it works great in every template, but it doesn't seem to be accessible when I do for instance:

<!-- BEGIN privateCategories -->
  <!-- IMPORT partials/menuItem.tpl -->
<!-- END privatecategories -->

The only thing accessible in the config object, which as I understand is added in the frontend load. Again, it works in the "main" templates, not in the menu (which replaces partials/slideout-menu.tpl).

Using Persona by the way.

So I've been working with NodeBB for a while now and am familiar with several concepts, but one thing I'm not sure about.

If I want to add data to the "global scope" before render. How would I do that?

I know how to get data to the page templates, but that doesn't carry over into the global templates, like the sidebar menu.

How can I, for instance, fetch my categories and place them in the sidebar?

@baris Nice! Thank you so much! Exactely what I was looking for.

When you fetch the categories a user can see by privilege, is there a way of telling whether the category is visible for everyone or if they are "private"?

Is there a way I can get the privileges assigned to a user and compare those to the privileges required for a category?

I'm browsing source right now, but if anyone have the answer on the top of their head, please give me a hand to save time.

In my plugin I write a lot of custom CSS (with LESS) and I do some overrides to speed things up (kind of tight deadline). one example is a custom btn-primary from bootstrap. I'm having a problem where this gets propagated into the admin view. I want to keep everything in the administration panel the way it is. Right now I'm solving it by doing this in my top LESS.file.

body:not(.admin) {
  @import "buttons";
  @import "help";
  @import "login";
}

The problem I'm facing is that i can't do something like body { display: none; } in another file since it's a child of that first file. I need to either add the style at the top with no surrounding class (which of course creates a lint problem), or add a class to the very top, like so &.page-login { css }.

Is there an easier way to just exclude admin from css?

Thanks!

Turned out I was fetching the post data wrong. I was using getPostData when i should've been using getPostsByPids.

Thanks for taking the time to reply. That might be a part of what I'm aiming for.

I want to create an array of topics that I can display in my "feed". Those topics can be added to the array by two reasons.

1. It's a recently created topic.
2. It contains recent posts. (So maybe I can use tour suggestion here)

The idea is just to have the new content presented when you first log in. I could look at Recent and Popular I think.

Once again, thank you!

So I'm creating a plugin to use a hidden category (named "Help") to store an FAQ. Basically any admin can add a topic to the category and the first post will be the content.

So my custom route /help gets all topics passed to the template but I just get the post content unformatted. So no new lines, no image tags etc. I believe it's Markdown. So how do I get the content with formatting?

This is what I'm using right now:

Controllers.renderHelpPage = (req, res) => {
	let fetchedTopics;
	let fetchedPosts;
	async.waterfall([
		(next) => {
			categories.getAllCategories(req.uid, next);
		},
		(_categories, next) => {
			const helpCategory = _categories.find(category => category.name === 'Help');
			categories.getCategoryById({
				cid: helpCategory.cid,
				set: 'cid:' + helpCategory.cid + ':tids',
				reverse: false,
				start: 0,
				stop: 100,
				uid: req.uid,
			}, next);
		},
		(_helpCategory, next) => {
			const tids = _helpCategory.topics.map(topic => topic.tid);
			topics.getTopics(tids, req.uid, next);
		},
		(_topics, next) => {
			fetchedTopics = _topics;
			const pids = _topics.map(topic => topic.mainPid);
			posts.getPostsData(pids, next);
		},
		(_posts) => {
			fetchedPosts = _posts;

			const data = fetchedTopics.map(topic => ({
				title: topic.title,
				content: fetchedPosts.find(post => post.tid === topic.tid).content,
			}));

			res.render('help', {
				items: data,
			});
		},
	]);
};

Thanks!

I'm getting all available categories for a user with categories.getCategoriesByPrivilege. Then I append to it with
categories.getRecentTopicReplies. I'm not getting what I want, only the top post (reply).

What I want is the following; a list of all topics with recent posts (preferably with a max limit in time range), within my available categories. What the client I'm working for want is a feed type thing with all recent activity displayed in one single flow. Then I will also drill down into specific categories but I think I've got that covered.

This is where I'm at so far:

Controllers.renderFeedPage = function (req, res) {
	if (!req.uid) {
		res.render('feed', {});
	}
	let categoriesData;
	let tree;

	async.waterfall([
		(next) => {
			categories.getCategoriesByPrivilege('categories:cid', req.uid, 'find', next);
		},
		(_categoriesData, next) => {
			categoriesData = _categoriesData;

			tree = categories.getTree(categoriesData, 0);
			categories.getRecentTopicReplies(categoriesData, req.uid, next);
		},
		() => {
			const data = {
				title: meta.config.homePageTitle || '[[pages:home]]',
				categories: tree,
			};
			res.render('feed', data);
		},
	]);
};

I haven't found a good example from the forum and I'm reading source code at this point.

If anyone has done something similar I would really appreciate the input and a nudge in the right direction.

Thanks!