help me move on to the next level...

stevesweetland

i dont want to be taught, i just need pointers in the right direction.

im a capable programmer, but recently im looking at forums coding, and how other sites are coded, and im thinkiing that its gonna be a good idea for me to move forward with my methodology.

Therefore, xml-php integration seems to work great with forum compiling and stuff, and the whole template compiling idea (%variable% being replaced by variable) sounds good to me - i could of course just write something, but id like to be pointed in the right direction.

am i seeing multiple methods where there is only really one?

id like to understand how

  <!-- BEGIN listrow -->
  <tr>
    <td class="{listrow.ROW_CLASS}" width="5%" align="center" valign="middle"><img src="{listrow.PRIVMSG_FOLDER_IMG}" width="19" height="18" alt="{listrow.L_PRIVMSG_FOLDER_ALT}" title="{listrow.L_PRIVMSG_FOLDER_ALT}" /></td>
    <td width="55%" valign="middle" class="{listrow.ROW_CLASS}"><span class="topictitle">&nbsp;<a href="{listrow.U_READ}" class="topictitle">{listrow.SUBJECT}</a></span></td>
    <td width="20%" valign="middle" align="center" class="{listrow.ROW_CLASS}"><span class="name">&nbsp;<a href="{listrow.U_FROM_USER_PROFILE}" class="name">{listrow.FROM}</a></span></td>
    <td width="15%" align="center" valign="middle" class="{listrow.ROW_CLASS}"><span class="postdetails">{listrow.DATE}</span></td>
    <td width="5%" align="center" valign="middle" class="{listrow.ROW_CLASS}"><span class="postdetails">
    <input type="checkbox" name="mark[]2" value="{listrow.S_MARK_ID}" />
    </span></td>
  </tr>
  <!-- END listrow -->
  <!-- BEGIN switch_no_messages -->
  <tr>
    <td class="row1" colspan="5" align="center" valign="middle"><span class="gen">{L_NO_MESSAGES}</span></td>
  </tr>
  <!-- END switch_no_messages -->

is picked up and looped appropriately by phpbb,

or, more accurately, i want to know how THIS works!!! (found on phpdig)

<phpdig:results>
<p>
<phpdig:page_link/><br />
<font size='2'>
<phpdig:text/>
</font>
<br />
<font size='2' color='green'><phpdig:complete_path/> <phpdig:filesize/> k</font>
</p>
</phpdig:results>

steadyguy

There's no one way to code something ... I'm writing a forum from scratch, and you can bet the farm that my code won't look much like the phpbb code. Some parts will be similar, though - if only because generating a table from a result set is most easily done with a loop. But you get to pick your poison: while, foreach, or for? You could even just hard code it.

As for XML, as you probably know from the name, it is natively extensible - you can mold it to your situation, and fit it to your needs. And then use XSLT to tranform it into something else, altogether ...

Not sure if that's what you're looking for ...

stevesweetland

Originally posted by steadyguy
There's no one way to code something ... I'm writing a forum from scratch, and you can bet the farm that my code won't look much like the phpbb code. Some parts will be similar, though - if only because generating a table from a result set is most easily done with a loop. But you get to pick your poison: while, foreach, or for? You could even just hard code it.

of course... explaining varied different approaches

Originally posted by steadyguy
As for XML, as you probably know from the name, it is natively extensible - you can mold it to your situation, and fit it to your needs. And then use XSLT to tranform it into something else, altogether ...

indeed, but implementation of xml is not something iv done, xslt? you see i suppose my question should really be : can someone give me an example / explanation of the methodology behind using xml and or other methods?

pahikua

XML might not even be neccessary. I sometimes use XML so that i can combine it with XSL templates. This let me have one data source (XML) and display it in many different formats (desktop, cell phone, handhelds etc). With a forum that's probably not neccassary. Maybe some others can share how XML might be used productively in a forum.