You signed in with another tab or window. Reload to refresh your session.You signed out in another tab or window. Reload to refresh your session.You switched accounts on another tab or window. Reload to refresh your session.Dismiss alert
## Locally store the content of a post in the phpBB forum software
4
+
5
+
## Locally store the content of a post in the phpBB forum software
4
6
5
7
A very simple [phpBB3](https://www.phpbb.com/) extension to use the browser's local storage for preventing the content of a post to be lost after a crash or session expiration.
6
8
@@ -14,7 +16,7 @@ Why, oh why, didn't phpBB save your data?
14
16
15
17
Well, there is the 'Draft' facility, but that doesn't work as well as it should. Unless you have an extension for that, by default, forum users have to _manually_ press <kbd>Save Draft</kbd> — and it will mean that some things (such as attachments) will be lost anyway. Drafts are also stored on the phpBB database, on the backend, so if something goes wrong with your connection and/or the database connection... you'll lose your draft as well.
16
18
17
-
This extension tries to replicate the most basic solution to the above issues. It uses your browser's local storage facility, which can be accessed using JavaScript. Although details differ between browsers, in general, each will persist the data across crashes. It should also be able to deal with most issues of lost typed content on posts (including on Quick Reply) as well as on Private Messages (PMs), as well as eliminating stale content taking up wasted space on the browser's local storage facility (at least, up to a point). Of course, all of this is only possible for *one* browser on *one* computer (as oppoesed to "Save Draft", which should work across browsers/computers/physical locations).
19
+
This extension tries to replicate the most basic solution to the above issues. It uses your browser's local storage facility, which can be accessed using JavaScript. Although details differ between browsers, in general, each will persist the data across crashes. It should also be able to deal with most issues of lost typed content on posts (including on Quick Reply) as well as on Private Messages (PMs), as well as eliminating stale content taking up wasted space on the browser's local storage facility (at least, up to a point). Of course, all of this is only possible for _one_ browser on _one_ computer (as oppoesed to "Save Draft", which should work across browsers/computers/physical locations).
18
20
19
21
## Installation
20
22
@@ -28,17 +30,17 @@ There is no further configuration required.
28
30
29
31
## Upgrading
30
32
31
-
There was a bug on the versions prior to 1.0.5 (bad JSON indentation on `composer.json`) which effectively prevented the automatic version-checking mechanism to work as it should. As a consequence, automatic upgrades are only triggered for versions 1.0.6 and up. This mostly means that anyone running a version before 1.0.5 will never get a notification to upgrade.
33
+
There was a bug on the versions prior to 1.0.5 (bad JSON indentation on `composer.json`) which effectively prevented the automatic version-checking mechanism to work as it should. As a consequence, automatic upgrades are only triggered for versions 1.0.6 and up. This mostly means that anyone running a version before 1.0.5 will never get a notification to upgrade. Sorry!
32
34
33
-
The format of the object saved to the local storage has changed *twice* — first to add a timestamp (to allow some automatic cleanup of stale data on storage), and second, for saving the contents of the subject line as well, not only the content in the textarea (main body of the article post). The current version of the plugin should be able to retrieve objects from the browser's local storage using the old format and save them using the new one, without loss of data.
35
+
The format of the object saved to the local storage has changed _twice_ — first to add a timestamp (to allow some automatic cleanup of stale data on storage), and second, for saving the contents of the subject line as well, not only the content in the textarea (main body of the article post). The current version of the plugin should be able to retrieve objects from the browser's local storage using the old format and save them using the new one, without loss of data.
34
36
35
37
While doing these changes, I noticed that the HTML attributes for a Quick Reply changed subtly from those used on a regular reply. This meant slightly tweaking the DOM-transversing functionality so that this plugin works with both. Hopefuly there are no further exceptions, but, if you encounter them, feel free to report those cases as well!
36
38
37
39
## Current testing
38
40
39
-
Since I have just a limited access to a testing environment, it's worth pointing out that, currenty, my own testing just includes browsers on macOS Big Sur, namely, Brave (Chromium-based), Safari, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge (also Chromium-based). Others, such as Opera, or any mobile/TV-based browser were *not* tested. phpBB3 is running as a native PHP-based application under nginx + php 8.2/8.3 on a Ubuntu Linux 22.0.4 LTS bare metal server hosted in Germany.
41
+
Since I have just a limited access to a testing environment, it's worth pointing out that, currenty, my own testing just includes browsers on macOS Big Sur, namely, Brave (Chromium-based), Safari, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge (also Chromium-based). Others, such as Opera, or any mobile/TV-based browser were _not_ tested. phpBB3 is running as a native PHP-based application under nginx + php 8.2/8.3 on a Ubuntu Linux 22.0.4 LTS bare metal server hosted in Germany.
40
42
41
-
Additionally, there are "mock" pages (coming with the GitHub package, but *not* with the phpBB3 plugin itself) that allow me to do some testing under different circumstances (I found some weird bugs that way!), beyond those that are handled by the automated CI tools that I'm currently using.
43
+
Additionally, there are "mock" pages (coming with the GitHub package, but _not_ with the phpBB3 plugin itself) that allow me to do some testing under different circumstances (I found some weird bugs that way!), beyond those that are handled by the automated CI tools that I'm currently using.
42
44
43
45
## Acknowledgements
44
46
@@ -53,5 +55,4 @@ Thanks to [@TrekRed](https://www.phpbb.com/community/memberlist.php?mode=viewpro
53
55
54
56
Logo designed by [DALL·E 2](https://openai.com/product/dall-e-2).
0 commit comments