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Wulp. I did a major upgrade by (a) breaking a lot of stuff and (b) by
re-doing those things in a much better way. I redesigned the stories
and submissions SQL tables, the way they work and the way they co-
operate together.
In addition, I changed the way parameters are passed to
$theme->abstract() and $theme->article(). Instead of passing a
sh!tload of parameters that only cluttered the code and required too
much pre-processing on the engine-side, we now pass a singly object
$story. $story has more variables then the paramaters we used to pass,
so it allows for better theming (if you feel like it).
I'm not finished yet but I decided to upload my changes so you can
start patching and updating your themes: PLEASE update your themes
ASAP! I don't plan making heavy changes like this again, so don't
get intimiated. ;) You mainly have to update article() and abstract()
as well as a minor update of footer():
article(), abstract():
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- use the $story object - see my theme!
- the morelink can now be themed. Currently you can use the function
morelink_bytes() in function.inc to `render' the old morelink. The
idea is to make a morelink_words() or morelink_lines() sooner or
later because "188 bytes in body" is not half as clear as "52 words
in body". Clearly, "52 words" is much more informative. ;-)
footer():
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- in the article-part, you need to update the displayRelatedLinks():
instead of passing it $sid, you need to pass it $story (after you
globaled $story).
Everything should display correct on the following pages:
- main page
- article page (follow a `read more | xxx bytes in bdoy | x comments' link)
- submission queue
Check if they work with your theme: they should as they work fine for
me (theme `Dries') ... If you got stuck, just look at my theme or ask
for a hand on the list!
Hopefully you can update your themes asap. Thanks in advance.
number of SQL on the mainpage with factor 10 and shortened the code with 4
lines. There is only *one* optimized SQL query left, being:
$result = db_query("SELECT stories.*, COUNT(comments.sid) AS comments FROM
stories LEFT JOIN comments ON stories.sid = comments.sid WHERE
stories.status = 1 AND stories.time <= $date GROUP BY stories.sid ORDER BY
stories.sid DESC LIMIT $number");
Note: we use a LEFT JOIN to retrieve the number of comments associated
with each story. By retrieving this data now, we elimate a *lot*
of individual queries that would otherwise be required inside the
while-loop. If there is no matching record for the right table in
the ON-part of the LEFT JOIN, a row with all columns set to NULL
is used for the right table. This is required, as not every story
has a counterpart in the comments table (at a given time).
to the outside world. It's a first step towards improving the submission
queue.
* More important (to the theme babies): instead of passing individual
parameters I'm considering to pass an object.
$theme->abstract($story->aid, $story->informant, $story->time,
stripslashes($story->subject), stripslashes($story->abstract),
stripslashes($story->comments), $story->category, $story->department,
$morelink);
would become:
$theme->abstract($story);
What do you guys think about pushing this trough? It would be much better
and would give extra `power' to the themes.
rendering a calendar less expensive.
* Added a function displayCalendar($theme, $active_date) to functions.inc.
* Adjusted index.php so it would support URIs formated like
"?date=$unix_timestamp".
* Integrated the calendar in my personal theme: themes/Dries/theme.class.
If you want to include the calendar in your theme, check the code in my
$theme->footer(): global $date and call displayCalendar($theme, $date).
Check the main page at http://beta.drop.org/ with theme 'Dries' to see it
yourself!
Dries Buytaert
Kjartan Mannes