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!!

Hi all!
I've run into an issue that when I deploy a new version of my theme/plugin, most users don't get any changes done until they do a hard refresh. This only seems to affect the client side Javascript, so everything looks updated, but in reality functionality gets lost.

Has anyone stumbled upon something similar? Is there a better way to release code?

The background in this is that I have forked Persona and built upon it, so all changes to the platform is basically in the theme. Is there a way to make sure all clients receive all updates?

Thanks!

Thanks for the clarification @PitaJ! I did a lot of experimenting but I guess I didn't get the right combination. I think I never tried naming the module with its extension. That might have been it. For anyone who might be interested in the actual solution, here it is:

In file-explorer.js:

define('azure/file-explorer', ['components'], function (components) {
	const FileExplorer = {};

	FileExplorer.init = function () {
		// Init stuff here	
	});

	return FileExplorer;
});

In plugin.json:

"modules": {
	"azure/file-explorer.js": "static/lib/file-explorer.js"
},

In admin.js:

define('admin/plugins/azure', ['settings', 'azure/file-explorer'], function (settings, fileExplorer) {
	fileExplorer.init();
});

In main.js:

$(document).ready(function () {
	require(['azure/file-explorer'], (fileExplorer) => {
		fileExplorer.init();
	});
});

@phenomlab Thanks! I did not know this was available. I'll have a look to see if it fits my needs.

I have a number of custom templates in my plugin and for some reason browsing to them can sometimes cause issues. In Chrome it looks like it works fine, but Firefox seems to have issues.

It seems to originate from ajaxify.loadTemplate.

The template has a script attached to it via plugin.json as such: "static/lib/communityAnalytics.js",.

The script itself is defined as follows define('forum/community/analytics',...

Clicking on a link that takes you to that template/page works fine in Chrome, but fails in Firefox. Browsing directly to that page works in both browsers.

Any ideas?

@pitaj This is the template:

<div class="row">
    <div class="col-xs-12 col-md-2 no-print">
        <div class="row">
            <div class="col-xs-12 col-sm-6 col-md-12 form-group">
                <label for="start">[[admin/advanced/events:filter-start]]</label>
                <input type="date" component="analytics/input-start" name="start" value="{query.start}"
                    class="form-control" />
            </div>
            <div class="col-xs-12 col-sm-6 col-md-12 form-group">
                <label for="end">[[admin/advanced/events:filter-end]]</label>
                <input type="date" id="end" component="analytics/input-end" value="{query.end}"
                    class="form-control" />
            </div>
            <div class="form-group col-xs-12">
                <button class="btn btn-primary" component="analytics/apply-btn">Apply</button>
            </div>
            <div class="form-group col-xs-12">
                <button class="btn btn-primary" component="analytics/view-activity-report">Activity report</button>
            </div>
        </div>
    </div>
    <div class="col-xs-12 col-md-10" id="events-chart">
        <canvas></canvas>
    </div>
</div>
<div class="row">
    <div class="col-xs-12" id="companies-chart">
        <canvas></canvas>
    </div>
</div>

The two canvases are used to draw diagrams with chart.js included from NodeBB core.

The template is located in static/templates/community/analytics.tpl

To me though, the error suggests that it tries to load a js file that it assumes exists (and it does) but then fails and halts everything. It's also seems a bit odd that it works fine on Chrome, but not Firefox.

@baris The plugin is not open source as of yet. It hopefully will be in the future but right now it's not ready.

This is the plugin.json:

{
	"id": "nodebb-plugin-community-analytics",
	"library": "./library.js",
	"hooks": [
		{
			"hook": "static:app.load", "method": "init"
		},
		{
			"hook": "static:api.routes", "method": "addRoutes"
		},
		{
			"hook": "filter:admin.header.build", "method": "addAdminNavigation"
		},
		{
			"hook": "action:events.log", "method": "writeEventLog"
		}
	],
	"staticDirs": {
		"static": "./static"
	},
	"less": [
		"static/style.less"
	],
	"modules": {
		"chroma.js": "static/external/chroma.min.js"
	},
	"scripts": [
		"static/lib/communityAnalytics.js",
		"static/lib/globalAnalytics.js",
		"static/lib/activityReport.js",
		"static/lib/chartHelpers.js"
	],
	"acpScripts": [
		"static/lib/admin.js"
	],
	"templates": "static/templates",
	"languages": "languages"
}

This is in the controllers.js-file.

Controllers.renderCommunityAnalyticsPage = async (req, res) => {
	const cid = parseInt(req.params.category_id, 10);

	if (Number.isNaN(cid)) return Helpers.notAllowed(req, res);

	const category = await Categories.getCategoryData(cid);

	const { from, to } = getTimestamps(req.query.from, req.query.to);

	return res.render('community/analytics', {
		category,
		filters: {
			from,
			to,
		}
	});
};

This is the script (not all obviously) that's not being found and the cause of an error being thrown:

'use strict';

define('forum/community/analytics', ['api', 'components'], (api, components) => {
    const Analytics = {
        category: ajaxify.data.category,
    };

    Analytics.init = () => {

    };

    return Analytics;
});

There are some functions in there that are not relevant, since the script doesn't even load. I just wanted to show how I defined it.

@pitaj I also have this issue in another plugin, but then it was only in the admin panel so I didn't put any effort into fixing it. This is on the forum itself, which is why I would like to sort it out.

@pitaj Yep.

Unable to load template: community/analytics nodebb.min.js:25493:12

and

Uncaught Error: Script error for "/assets/templates/community/analytics.js"
https://requirejs.org/docs/errors.html#scripterror

These actually come up twice in one navigation.

I have tried rebuild/restart and clear cache.

I have a number of custom templates in my plugin and for some reason browsing to them can sometimes cause issues. In Chrome it looks like it works fine, but Firefox seems to have issues.

It seems to originate from ajaxify.loadTemplate.

The template has a script attached to it via plugin.json as such: "static/lib/communityAnalytics.js",.

The script itself is defined as follows define('forum/community/analytics',...

Clicking on a link that takes you to that template/page works fine in Chrome, but fails in Firefox. Browsing directly to that page works in both browsers.

Any ideas?

@phenomlab Thanks! I did not know this was available. I'll have a look to see if it fits my needs.

So when you delete a user (not the content) the name defaults to "Guest". How would I change this to something else? My forum is (by plugin) locked, so there are no such thing as guests.

I would like to replace it with something like "Previous user" instead and on a global scope. I need it to show the same in chats, posts and everything else connected.

I could of course use a list of hooks and write custom functions to change the name to a custom language file string, but it would be more convenient to catch it once.

Any ideas?

@baris That's it. Worked like a charm. Thanks!

I also tried to use the helper function notAllowed, but I get the same result. Redirects to /login but get errors in the log that data is undefined and there is no catch().

library.checkLoginStatus = async (data) => {
	if (data.req.loggedIn ||
		allowedUrls(data.req.url)
	) {
		return data;
	}
	return Helpers.notAllowed(data.req, data.res);
};

Seems like reverting to callbacks resolves it. I really wanted this to work with async/await, since callbacks will sooner or later be phased out I guess.

library.checkLoginStatus = (data, callback) => {
	if (data.req.loggedIn ||
		allowedUrls(data.req.url)
	) {
		callback(null, data);
	} else {
		Helpers.redirect(data.res, '/login');
	}
};