[RFC|Merged] notification box

[RMcGirr83]

https://area51.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopi ... 85#p245985

[Jessica.]

must have missed that thanks..

[Pony99CA]

https://area51.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopi ... 85#p245985

True, but will there be any new ACP Settings for notifications (like Load Settings)? If there are, the admin could block some of those UCP settings.

Steve

[EXreaction]

I do not see where any ACP settings would be helpful.

[Pony99CA]

I do not see where any ACP settings would be helpful.

If notifications are displayed on every page (not just the Board Index), I could see them generating a significant volume of queries. If that's correct, I'd think that one or more Load Settings would be appropriate. There's a Load Setting for Enable birthday listing, and notifications probably generate more load than birthdays (which are only on the Board Index anyway).

Steve

[EXreaction]

So an option to disable the notifications display, saving the queries and load on each page (it would still store the notifications and then users could receive email or other types of direct notifications)?

To any of the past few posts about problems/things needed to be fixed, I've not forgotten about you guys, I've just been sick the last week and haven't had time, hopefully that will change soon.

[RMcGirr83]

Neither Rome nor phpBB 3.1 were done in one day.

[Pony99CA]

So an option to disable the notifications display, saving the queries and load on each page (it would still store the notifications and then users could receive email or other types of direct notifications)?

Yes, something like that, I think. (I'm no expert on performance, though.)

It might also depend on how notifications are stored. If you just query existing tables to generate notifications, you might want one option per notification type, but if you somehow store notifications in a single notifications table, you might just have one option.

As I said, though, I'm no expert on performance, but generally favor giving admins more control rather than less. In fact, I think it would be very cool to abstract the notification medium out into plug-ins (like CAPTCHAs) to allow developing new notification media (like SMS, Twitter, RSS Feeds, etc.). But that's probably another RFC.

Steve

[EXreaction]

There is a single table for all notifications. The table is queried to get the number of unread subscriptions, the last 5 are loaded, and then any unread after the last 5 are also loaded, then all relevant user data is loaded (the usernames of the people who did what ever it was that created the notification). That's 3 queries plus 1 more if there are more unread messages. These are very fast queries though (0.00085s combined on my local board, which yes has little data, but also is on my desktop).

The notification medium is already abstracted, any of those could very easily be added with the addition of a single file (either in the includes/notifications/methods/ directory, or, in the notifications/methods/ directory in an extension) if they were supported properly (for example, SMS would require an extra field for the user to input their cell number and a system to send them messages, RSS would probably require some secret key generation and management system for security).

[Pony99CA]

The notification medium is already abstracted, any of those could very easily be added with the addition of a single file (either in the includes/notifications/methods/ directory, or, in the notifications/methods/ directory in an extension) if they were supported properly (for example, SMS would require an extra field for the user to input their cell number and a system to send them messages, RSS would probably require some secret key generation and management system for security).

Is it abstracted out in phpBB 3.0 or just 3.1?

Anyway, part of the absstraction would probably be a Notification_Address table with user ID and medium as the key pieces. So you'd have a table like (I'm showing user names and media names instead of ID numbers):

Pony99CA, Board, N/A
Pony99CA, E-mail, pony99ca@example.com
Pony99CA, SMS, +1-999-555-1212
EXreaction, Board, N/A
EXreaction, E-mail, exreaction@example.com
EXreaction, RSS, http://example.com/rss/userid

and so on. The Board and E-mail items would be created when you registered. Changing your E-mail address would change the notification E-mail address.

Steve