Dakusan’s Domain > Posts > Getting HTML from Simple Machine Forum (SMF) Posts

When I first created my website 10 years ago, from scratch, I did not want to deal with writing a comment system with HTML markups. And in those days, there weren’t plugins for everything like there is today. My solution was setting up a forum which would contain a topic for every Project, Update, and Post, and have my pages mirror the linked topic’s posts.

I had just put in a quick hack at the time in which the pulled SMF message’s body had links converted from bbcode (there might have been 1 other bbcode I also hooked). I had done this with regular expressions, which was a nasty hack.

So anywho, I finally got around to writing a script that converts SMF messages’ bbcode to HTML and caches it. You can download it here, or see the code below. The script is optimized so that it only ever needs to load SMF code when a post has not yet been cached. Caching happens during the initial loading of an SMF post within the script’s main function, and is discarded if the post is changed.

The script requires that you run the query on line #3 of itself in your SMF database. Directly after that are 3 variables you need to set. The script assumes you are already logged in to the appropriate user. To use it, call “GFTP\GetForumTopicPosts($ForumTopicID)”. I have the functions split up so you can do individual posts too if needed (requires a little extra code).

<?
//This SQL command must be ran before using the script
//ALTER TABLE smf_messages ADD body_html text, ADD body_md5 char(32) DEFAULT NULL;

namespace GFTP;

//Forum database variables
global $ForumInfo;
$ForumInfo=Array(
    'DBName'=>'YourDatabase_smf',
    'Location'=>'/home/YourUser/www',
    'MessageTableName'=>'smf2_messages',
);

function GetForumTopicPosts($ForumTopicID)
{
    //Change to the forum database
    global $ForumInfo;
    $CurDB=mysql_fetch_row(mysql_query('SELECT database()'))[0];
    if($CurDB!=$ForumInfo['DBName'])
        mysql_select_db($ForumInfo['DBName']);
    $OldEncoding=SetEncoding(true);

    //Get the posts
    $PostsInfos=Array();
    $PostsQuery=mysql_query('SELECT '.implode(', ', PostFields())." FROM $ForumInfo[MessageTableName] WHERE id_topic='".intval($ForumTopicID).
        "' AND approved=1 ORDER BY id_msg ASC LIMIT 1, 9999999");
    if($PostsQuery) //If query failed, do not process
        while(($PostInfo=mysql_fetch_assoc($PostsQuery)) && ($PostsInfos[]=$PostInfo))
            if(md5($PostInfo['body'])!=$PostInfo['body_md5']) //If the body md5s do not match, get new value, otherwise, use cached value
                ProcessPost($PostsInfos[count($PostsInfos)-1]); //Process the lastest post as a reference

    //Restore from the forum database
    if($CurDB!=$ForumInfo['DBName'])
        mysql_select_db($CurDB);
    SetEncoding(false, $OldEncoding);

    //Return the posts
    return $PostsInfos;
}

function ProcessPost(&$PostInfo) //PostInfo must have fields id_msg, body, body_md5, and body_html
{
    //Load SMF
    global $ForumInfo;
    if(!defined('SMF'))
    {
        global $context;
        require_once(rtrim($ForumInfo['Location'], DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR).DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'SSI.php');
        mysql_select_db($ForumInfo['DBName']);
        SetEncoding();
    }

    //Update the cached body_html field
    $ParsedCode=$PostInfo['body_html']=parse_bbc($PostInfo['body']);
    $EscapedHTMLBody=mysql_escape_string($ParsedCode);
    $BodyMD5=md5($PostInfo['body']);
    mysql_query("UPDATE $ForumInfo[MessageTableName] SET body_html='$EscapedHTMLBody', body_md5='$BodyMD5' WHERE id_msg=$PostInfo[id_msg]");
}

//The fields to select in the Post query
function PostFields() { return Array('id_msg', 'poster_time', 'id_member', 'subject', 'poster_name', 'body', 'body_md5', 'body_html'); }

//Swap character encodings. Needs to be set to utf8
function SetEncoding($GetOld=false, $NewSet=Array('utf8', 'utf8', 'utf8'))
{
    //Get the old charset if required
    $CharacterVariables=Array('character_set_client', 'character_set_results', 'character_set_connection');
    $OldSet=Array();
    if($GetOld)
    {
        //Fill in variables with default in case they are not found
        foreach($CharacterVariables as $Index => $Variable)
            $OldSet[$Variable]='utf8';

        //Query for the character sets and update the OldSet array
        $Query=mysql_query('SHOW VARIABLES LIKE "character_%"');
        while($VariableInfo=mysql_fetch_assoc($Query))
            if(isset($OldSet[$VariableInfo['Variable_name']]))
                $OldSet[$VariableInfo['Variable_name']]=$VariableInfo['Value'];

        $OldSet=array_values($OldSet); //Turn back into numerical array
    }

    //Change to the new database encoding
    $CompiledSets=Array();
    foreach($CharacterVariables as $Index => $Variable)
        $CompiledSets[$Index]=$CharacterVariables[$Index].'="'.mysql_escape_string($NewSet[$Index]).'"';
    mysql_query('SET '.implode(', ', $CompiledSets));

    //If requested, return the previous values
    return $OldSet;
}
?>