Uploaded version 1.3.1 of Notifi.

We have identified the problem and it is an incompatibility with another extension called Low-Cal Vanilla. I will attempt to find a fix but in the meantime I have made an "Incompatibilities" section in this extension's description to let people know.

I've made no changes to the tables except for the name of the main one, because I didn't want any conflicts with Notify.
It used to be called prefix_Notify, now it's called prefix_Notifi, where "prefix_" is of course your Vanilla table prefix, which I think is "LUM_" by default.
But what you can do is easily get an export of your current database, grab the part with the Notify table, then just replace "Notify" with "Notifi" and run the code to insert it, effectively copying the Notify table to the Notifi one.
If you want more specific instructions my email address is in the extension, it would be easier to help if I can ask questions about your setup. It should be very simple, though.

I've just tried installing this extension, and am not having too much luck.

Basically, I click on a discussion to be subscribed, and the little swirly loading thing just spins for ever (or at least, as long as I waited) :)

It hasn't made any difference to the settings and when I reload, or view my notification settings under my account settings, everything is unticked.

any help appreciated.. thanks

disabled all others, and still not working. just twirls forever..

the other extensions are Buy A Drink 1.1, Discussion Filters 2.0, and Preset Avatars 1.0.

To iamspammer:
The SubscribeOwn column is just a switch that when enabled (by entering "1") means that user will be automatically subscribed to discussions they start. It isn't a fully implemented feature, but I plan to make a better control panel for the next release, which will allow users to use that feature, among others.
Users will only be notified if they have permission to view that category.
I might add the ability to put more information in the email body at a later date, once I have finished with some other new features.

To tekhammer:
I don't know what the problem could be, it has worked for many others so maybe an old extension left something over that is breaking it, or you/someone have edited the code manually. Maybe you should try a fresh install.

To iamspammer:
The SubscribeOwn functionality now works (when the user has the SubscribeOwn column, of course :))

I didn't put it in this release as you can see, but definitely in the next one which won't be too far away, probably next weekend as that seems to be the only time I can work on this at the moment.
Also, at the risk of opening Pandora's Box by posting this publicly, sure I am always happy for help and ideas. Vanilla is used so differently by everyone I'm sure there are great features I have never even considered.

I run 4 OS's; 2 Linux distros, XP and Vista.
Sorry to lose you and your helpful opinions.

I added following code at line 143. This is work around to add comment in the email until you come up with the solution. Just wanted to post it here in case anybody needed it now.

[code]
$result = mysql_query("SELECT Body FROM ".$DiscussionForm->Context->Configuration['DATABASE_TABLE_PREFIX']."Comment WHERE CommentID = '$CommentID'");
$row = mysql_fetch_row($result);
$mComment = str_replace('
',"\n",strip_tags($row[0]));
[/code]

Problem is that Vanilla Email only supports plain text now. I can change it to HTML but then I'll have to your email_notify.txt to include
for new line and other HTML code for link.

I din't want to do this because if you submit any updates, and if I forgot to change it then all users will complain.

So, work around for now is

$mComment = str_replace('
',"\n",strip_tags($row[0]));

This will change
to new line and strip all html tags like

and so on. This will loose all formatting in the email but this is the workaround for now. Hopefully you have something else planned.


-----

To send an HTML email, you can ask users to change library/Framework/Framework.Class.Email.php line.


They can ADD following at line 33

var $ContentType = 'text/plain';


ADD Following at 103
$this->ContentType = 'text/plain';


and UPDATE following with 144

.'Content-type: '.$this->ContentType.'; charset='



All it does is, change Static content type to variable based.

Then you can change it from your class like $e->ContentType = 'text/html';




Like I said, I din't do this on my forum in the hopes that you'll have another sophiticated work around this problem.

Thanks

Uploaded version 1.5 of Notifi.

I installed new version and it worked fine for me except a bug which a user just reported to me.Thanks for all the options. I just tested the one where users get repeated email even if they haven't visited the forum and it works flawlessly.

When a new discussion is added, email doesn't include comment. It's empty. I tried to see how to correct it but I am not sure. Can you please tell me how "NotifiDiscusison()" function is called? I can't seem to find any reference which call this function. I am not sure how you call it but if you let me know then I can help you debug it for new problems as my forum uses it extensively.

Also, I think it'd be good idea to include DiscussionTitle in every email. The reason is, when users get email with comment, they are not able to tell which discussion that comment belonged to in the email.

Ok, deleting my old comment as that problem was fixed in the release released while I was writing it. ;)

Now it installs without a hitch, but still doesn't seem to work. I'll try to clean up the mess caused by Notify and earlier versions of Notifi and see if that helps, but I don't really understand why it doesn't work.

This is what happens:
After I've installed (installing works! Yay for 1.5.1) the link to subscribing appears as it should (and just like it did with the old Notify), however pressing it does nothing at all, just takes me to the front page. It looks like the JS isn't loaded or something.

There will be another bugfix release within a few hours, thanks for the feedback guys, and sorry for the bugs. I'm aware that 1.5.1 doesn't fix everything but I just wanted to release something ASAP to show I am working on it and to fix some of the problems. Expect 1.5.2 very soon.

Daniel, I can't reproduce the problem. I've tried with an old version of Vanilla that has had Notify and Notifi installed on it, as well as a fresh installation. Did you upload all the files, not just default.php? I changed a couple of files from 1.5.0 to 1.5.1. Also have you tried refreshing a page, or shift+refreshing? I use Firefox and sometimes it forgets to check for a new version of a JavaScript file until I very forcefully tell it to do so :p

Uploaded version 1.6 of Notifi.

SubJunk: Removing the old folder completely (and all the relevant settings in /conf/) and then reinstalling fixed it. It looks like it works now.

Hi:

Thanks for responding so quickly and adding the required features. Much appreciated.

mail feature in update din't work for me. I should tell you that I am using this forum in intranet and we have our own exchange server. So, I updated my php.ini to include smtp address of that server and it worked. I am just curious as to why it din't work with default settings.

My guess is that I had put my smtp address in vanilla settings and those din't carry over when you used php's mail function. I checked Vanill's config files and noticed that it users forum/conf/settings.php and $Configuration['SMTP_HOST'] as the smtp host. May be you want to change your extension to use that so that it'll work with hosts which specify their smtp host in settings rather than php.ini. Just a suggestion.

Also, one last feature request.

When a new discussion notification is sent, can you please format it like you do the normal noticaition? Not only in style but also include comments.


Thanks.


EDIT: I think it'd be better if it uses those settings because I just noticed that it only users email in FROM but not the name. I noticed that your old version used SUPPORT_NAME and SUPPORT_EMAIL in the FROM field. It'd be nice to have it use those settings

Thanks

Don't hate me but there is another Feature Request. I am not sure if it's possible but want to know your opinion.

If users decide to NOT receive notification after receiving one (even if you added that nice setting in Notification; which is being used a lot on my forum), is it possible to reset (if user selects in the settings; so not default) that next day?

Say, today is Tuesday and user gets notification. They won't get anything after (by default). But, they decide to select NEW setting (which is not there yet :) ). So, When (and if) there is new notification on Wednesday and IF user has selected that setting, then is it possible to reset the flag and send notification? After that it'll do the same and then reset on Thursday and so on.

I am not sure if it's possible. Even if it is, I can see extra load on forum on EVERY post.

Lets say its possible, will you suggest using it?

Thanks

To iamspammer:
It would be possible to set that up with cron jobs, and no it wouldn't need to place any load on the server. A cron job is just like a scheduler with apache, you specify a time for the server to run a script, so it could just be like "if EmailDaily is true and Notified is true then set Notified to false", and set the job to run that in a while loop every day at midnight, or if they want to get the email regardless of their viewing the forum then it can be "if EmailDaily is true then set Notified to false". I'll have a look at it, I've actually never controlled cron jobs from PHP, only done it from the server itself, but I know that is how a lot of scripts manage schedules so it shouldn't be too hard.

To garysmith:
Do you know if the database changes were successfully made? There needs to be the following columns in the User table: SubscribeOwn, Notified, SuscribedEntireForum and KeepEmailing.
If that was the problem, can you please tell me which version you upgraded to 1.6 from? Maybe there is something wrong with the upgrading code that I missed.

To everyone:
Anyway I will do some more work on the extension in the weekend I think, I am very busy with work. Also for the 2.0 release (won't be for a while yet but I have started on it) I think it will be best if I make it non-upgradeable, which I know is a huge pain in the butt but the purpose of the 2.0 release is that most of the code will be rewritten and restructured, and it would be easier to do that without worrying about supporting the old code (most of which I didn't write).
It is possible though that I won't do it, it's just something I'm considering. If it will be an insurmountable problem for a lot of people I won't do it.
It is also possible I can write another extension called "NotifiUpdate" to convert all the stuff from 1.x format to 2.x format, and include that to be run once before enabling Notifi 2.0.
Anyway at this point I'm just writing notes to myself in public so I'll cut that out now :)

I was hoping to avoid cron job, as that will be one extra thing to manage (I already have many other jobs to manage). I was hoping that it can built in this extension. I have the logic but not sure if that will put extra load (this is what I meant). Here is my logic:

- Notify User once
- Check if users wants to notify even if they haven't visited forum
- If yes then notify
- If not, then check when was the last notification made
- Update the notification field (through update statement), IF "Notified" is set to true AND NotifyDate (new field?) is not the same day,month and year (can be 2 days later in case there was no activity on the forum. It will be greater because time will increment if system time is used and it's not tampered with but in any case if date is different (just day, year and month))


Confusing? I was confused t0o when I wrote this. Maybe it's making little sense :)

That is the default functionality of Notifi. Users receive one notification and then they don't get any until they visit notification.

Users complained that it is a good idea that they are not cluttered with emails. But, sometimes they forget to visit the forum and don't get any emails.

So, if there is an option (they have to select it so not to mess with default functionality) which they can use so that, they get notified once a day for EVERY day (unless of course they decide to get notification for EVERY post).

This way even if they forget, they will get at least one notification each day.

I hope I am clear :)


They did request daily digest and it may be useful and i can help you there. It's just I am lot busy with college and part time work that I dont have enough time. One more reason I dont want to do it is cron job (or "scheduled tasks" in windows). we already have many on our server and I don't want these there if I can help it.



Feature:

- Adding comment for new discussion (right now it just says discussion name)
- Formatting notification email further with the following format. You will just have to change discussion query.


Format for new discussion

Discussion: NAME
Category: NAME
Author: USER_NAME
Comment: NEW DISCUSSION COMMENT

Format for comment

Discussion: NAME
Category: NAME
Discussion Author: USER_NAME

Comment: NEW COMMENT
Comment Author: USER_NAME


If you want I can try to change it and then send you the code so you can format it and fit it in your code. Let me know. I could add the code my self but I wanted to upgrade this discussion so that I can use it directly in future and keep the changes.

To iamspammer:
As you can see, with 1.6.1 the comment is emailed even in new discussions, and the email system will now work regardless of php.ini settings.
With regards to your email format suggestions, I really don't think that will be an improvement for me personally. Of course you are free to modify your own version however you want, or even release your own version like I did going from Notify to Notifi (you can call yours Notified, or NotIfICanMakeItBetter ;)) but seriously, thanks for the thought you are putting into this, it is very helpful.
I also don't have interest in making the daily function you suggested, because I just don't see it being used by many people, maybe I'm blind but there is my opinion :)
Please do not feel discouraged from posting/emailing your ideas for new things, they are always appreciated.

Thanks. I understand. Those were just suggestions. I know how much work it is. Like I said, I am quite busy so won't be able to create new extension but could help with yours. If you need my help in future then let me.

I installed new update and it worked. I did a few changes and am posting these here in case you think users might want these.

Line 339. Link to the comment without HTML code as sometimes (it occurs frequently) link doesn't work. This way users can copy and paste the link
- Context->Configuration['BASE_URL'].'comments.php?DiscussionID='.$DiscussionID.'&page='.$pageNumber.'#Item_'.$commentNo.'">Click here to view the comment on the forum or copy and paste following link in your browser, '.$DiscussionForm->Context->Configuration['BASE_URL'].'comments.php?DiscussionID='.$DiscussionID.'&page='.$pageNumber.'#Item_'.$commentNo.'





It's just a minor change but I have seen it used often, even now.

But, thanks for updating this extension. I had to make those changes for my forum. It just so happened that you started this extension and I just gave you ideas and used it. :) :)

EDIT: Is there a way to figure out if the discussion, that user is being notified about, is new I just wanted to put it in email to let users know if this is new discussion or not.

Thanks

The way to figure out if the discussion is new or not is just checking if $CommentID is set, so if(isset($CommentID)). If it is set it is an old discussion, if it isn't set it is new. But now after further thought I have put the different emails back in anyway.
I also put in your suggestion of having the link to copy and paste, thanks it was a good one I had overlooked.