CM2F (mail 2 forum) Port for SMF

[digitalgraal]

Hello all,


I have started to port my application CM2F, which allows to create a bridge  between mail based communications (like yahoo groups or Mailinglists) and forums, to SMF.
I have received the petition from a couple of users in the last weeks, but initially i was not sure  about doing it because the lack of time that i had and the porting activities that i was currently doing for other solutions.
During the tests that i have performed with the applications i liked it, and saw that the porting could be easy, so i have started it.

At this moment and after some hardwork, taking the fact that my server is currently down due to hackers (security hole not created by CM2F) i have been able to have CM2F admin interfaces displayed and working at 75% in SMF. This allows to make the major configurations to that rules how the systems behaves.
The only options that are not working currently are the ones that needs directly to have some feed from the Forum, like for instance the the forum identification data. I am not forseing any major difficulty has i have been working for my other ports to have a MetaLayer that will create a interface for this kind of information.

I am hopping to have a fully working version by the end of this week that i will open to a limited  number of users in order to see what bugs are still present.



Regards,
D.

www.digitalgraal.dyndns.org

[gri]

Hello all,

I have started to port my application CM2F, which allows to create a bridge  between mail based communications (like yahoo groups or Mailinglists) and forums to SMF.
I am hopping to have a fully working version by the end of this week that i will open to a limited  number of users in order to see what bugs are still present.

Regards,
D.

www.digitalgraal.dyndns.org

digitalgraal,
Please add me to that limited number of users..
for participating in testing.
There is a good reason to develop the product
which is needed by World Mankind.. not SMF Team only.

[rhizome]

Hi D

Thanks for your efforts. It will be a great add-on to smf
Will be pleased to help beta test it

rhizome

[alitahir]

I would like to be included  too in this list of valuable beta testers:

Thanks for developping such an important  functionality for the rest of us.

[digitalgraal]

Good news every one.

I have the admin interface 100% integrated into SMF admin interface. It fully integrates as the other functions and it is calling the other functions just like SMF.
I need now to remove all the debug information that i had to put in the screens and to make it modular since my goal is too keep CM2F in just one release package able to adapt it self to the running environment.

It has been a very good excercise as i have now a fully modular administration modules that is able to be port to other portals and other forums nicely. This was one of my main problems when thinking in moving CM2F to other mods.

I should be able to post screenshots  in a couple of days,

regards,
D.

[Tobias Eigen]

Hi -

I'm very glad all this is going on. Please keep us informed of your progress and let us know when you have something to test so we can help you.

I just returned from a few days off (moving to Seattle and playing with fireworks) and see that only rhizome came to check it out - I'd be happy to show it to others that are interested in this type of functionality.

Cheers,

Tobias

[euripides]

please also keep us informed.

this is such an important feature for many, many of my forums!!

This is great!
if this exists anywhere, could we also have a link to it?

TIA.

[alitahir]

Pleased to hear good news

[rhizome]

Hi D

Great to hear that you have made such excellent progress 

Looking forward to testing it

[digitalgraal]

Hello All,

once every thing is cleaned of all the debug information, as i have done for the other ports, i will setup a new demo environment to have people testing CM2F with SMF.

For now, i have already been able to import a couple of emails, but i am not able to post, and attachments are not yet enabled as i need to understand how attachments are implemented in SMF.

Regards,
D.

[[Unknown]]

and attachments are not yet enabled as i need to understand how attachments are implemented in SMF.

Which part?

Essentially, it's a many to one relationship - the attachments table points to the messages table.  This allows many attachments per a single post.

The filenames are "encrypted" with the "getAttachmentFilename" function in Subs.php.

-[Unknown]

[digitalgraal]

At this moment, i don't know which part is not working. I have not had time to dig up too much in the attachments.

My main point was trying to find the frameword that would allow me then to create a way to integrate the administration interface with other forums.

I am now looking in the attachments, and it seems that it will not represent a problem to have working soon. Thank you for the information you send, it has been quite useful.

Regards,
D.

[gsbe]

Good luck, digitalgraal. This will be what we've all been waiting for when released. Let us know if you need any more help with your work. Cheers to you!

[Ed Teune]

Digitalgraal, keep up the good work, I, personally am chomping at the bit to use your mod in every forum I administer.
Please add me to beta testers if possible, this will be the greatest thing since sliced mangos on sticky rice.

[digitalgraal]

Hi All,

this is a rather strange question, but the truth, is that until i have been unable to find where HTML is enabled in SMF.
CM2F is importing messages into the forum correctly when text messages, but when it comes to HTML i am not able to switch on HTML support in SMF.

Could some one point me to the right configuration screen? I think that i am becoming good with the kernel of the forum, but still very bad with the interfaces.

I am now setting up the test forum for smf at smf.digitalgraal.dyndns.org. The integration is not full, and some of the functions will not be activated as i am still trying to figure out how to address simple things like the html one.

Regards,
D.

[[Unknown]]

i am not able to switch on HTML support in SMF.

SMF does not allow users to post HTML, for security reasons among other things.

-[Unknown]

[digitalgraal]

ok,

that means then that the only option is to simple clean any message of all the HTML tags.

What is the formatting language that you are then using in the forum? bbcode? If this is the case, then what i have to do, is simply to convert any incoming html message into the native formatting language, no?

Regards,
D.

[[Unknown]]

Yeah - most things are pretty simple - <strong> and <b> to , etc.

-[Unknown]

[gsbe]

What is the formatting language that you are then using in the forum? bbcode? If this is the case, then what i have to do, is simply to convert any incoming html message into the native formatting language, no?

There was quite a bit of work done with BBCODE conversion on the m2f project. You may want to look into their code and see how they're doing it...

[digitalgraal]

Hi gsbe,

i don't think i need to look at the code of M2F... M2F is my project too. I am the original author of M2F and then i forked to CM2F, so the code is very well known to me, and i don't want to go that way. I have already a couple of functions to do the transformation, so i don-t think it will be a problem.
My problem is that i was thinking that SMF supported HTML,  and i was not seeing how to do it. This was quite frustating for some one that have spent the last 4 years coding forum code ...
Now that i now that is not supported, it is just a question of transformation the code, which is already done:)... Yesterday evening after the reply to this thread, i have started and integrated the conversion code, so this means that now CM2F, in its M2F feature is already processing correctly incoming messages.
I am now moving into the attachments in order to have a class enabled to process attachments the way SMF does. I am not expecting too much work as the attachment implementation in SMF is much more simple than the PhpBB one.

The status then for the port is now the following:

- Administrative interfaces, 90%, after a changes in the code i have, somehow, create a problem with the integration of the admin interfaces, the options from CM2F are displayed in SMF admin menu, you can click on it, and go to the CM2F ones. But before, the CM2F appeared embebbed in the admin layout of SMF, and now they are appearing by it self. So i need to see what changed, in order to get back the integration fully working.
- M2F options, working at 85%, there are some replies that are changing the ordering of the messages in SMF threads, so i need to debug this thing out.
- F2M options, the subscibe function is not yet working, i have not coded it yet. the mailing functions are the same (with the exception of the attachs which need to be adpated) and are working without to much problems.Status is 70%.

I am setting up a SMF live demo site to allow users to test CM2F over SMF, the url will be smf.digitalgraal.dyndns.org


Regards,
D.