Change title of main topic and title of response

[hrx]

Hello,

Currently in phpBB doesn't have a possibility of the change of name of the main topic along with all replies "Re:". I wrote a request whether somebody could to create the extension, thanks to which it would be possible to change it, unfortunately nobody answered. I decide to write the suggestion in Area51, if could you at one time release such a function? In my opinion it's needed option for the moderation.

[DavidIQ]

Sounds like an extension to me.

[Dragosvr92]

That will be a bit difficult as each post has its own subject title. The same topic title gets copied over and over again.
For which i made this topic. viewtopic.php?f=81&t=45797
If we remove all the static post title from being copied repeatedly in each post, and just use the topictitle to repeat it there(if thats really needed), what you seek would be done without any extension.

[Pony99CA]

It's VERY simple, I believe. If the title of the topic post doesn't equal the old topic title, just update all occurrences in the posts table where the title equals "RE: [old topic title]" to "RE: [new topic title]". You can probably do it myPHPAdmin. (NOTE: I haven't looked at the phpBB database for a while, so it could be a bit more complicated. )

Steve

[MattF]

It's VERY simple, I believe. If the title of the topic post doesn't equal the old topic title, just update all occurrences in the posts table where the title equals "RE: [old topic title]" to "RE: [new topic title]". You can probably do it myPHPAdmin. (NOTE: I haven't looked at the phpBB database for a while, so it could be a bit more complicated. )

Steve

Well, almost... Not all occurrences in the posts table. It's very possible that there could be other topics with the exact same title. So you'd also want to make sure it's only posts who belong to the actual topic id being edited.

Hmm, I may look into this one.

[Dragosvr92]

You could do that in phpmyadmin. And specifying the topic id of the data you want to change should be also possible.
I guess it would be something similar to this?

Code: Select all

UPDATE phpbb_posts SET post_subject = 'Re: NEW TITLE' WHERE post_subject = 'Re: OLD TITLE' AND topic_id="48706";

But using the same title string and display it in all entries would be better than keeping to copy it over and over.

[pierredu]

Hmm, I may look into this one

If you do that, could you provide an option to have the 'Re: ' prefix or not?
This is the ugliest thing I ever saw (albeit it is the norm in english or even in US-english).

[MattF]

See extension here: https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtop ... &t=2348996

[Dragosvr92]

If you do that, could you provide an option to have the 'Re: ' prefix or not?
This is the ugliest thing I ever saw (albeit it is the norm in english or even in US-english).

To remove the prefix :
Find this part in the vse/smartsubjects/event/main_listener.php:

Code: Select all

// Re: is actually hardcoded within phpBB ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
$old_subject = 'Re: ' . $event['data']['topic_title'];
$new_subject = 'Re: ' . $event['post_data']['post_subject'];

Replace the last line with this:

Code: Select all

$new_subject = $event['post_data']['post_subject'];

or this

Code: Select all

$new_subject = '' . $event['post_data']['post_subject'];

[MattF]

^^ Don't do what Dragosvr92 mentions there unless you want to make a right mess of your board!!! 'Re: ' is stored in the database. Doing what he recommends will make a messy situation where most titles will still have it, and some (only the one's edited) won't. If you ever decide to remove the extension...you're sh@t outta luck! You're stuck with some titles having it and some not. Very destructive and irreversible!!

Disclaimer: Editing/hacking extensions is never condoned or recommended, and grounds for termination of support IMO.

As per removing Re:... Not gonna happen! For one thing, I personally agree with having Re:, considering every reply is in regards or reference to the primary post...or some post above...same thing you see in emails, for example.

I have already looked into what it would take to remove it using the extension I made, and it's simply not possible from an extension in a non-destructive way. For one thing, post titles are shown everywhere: viewtopic, topic review, MCP, UCP, admin logs, feeds, forum index, search results, notifications, and many more places! It's unrealistic to try to have an extension remove "Re:" from every possible location where it can be shown, and that's not even taking into account other extensions that may show them.

So that leaves only the destructive option, to wipe them from the database. This of course is unacceptable as it has no safe way of reverting back if you decide to remove the extension. In fact, no extension should ever make such decisive changes to the exisiting data on a forum...that's no longer extending phpBB, that's outright hacking it!

So my initial assessment of adding an option to remove "Re:" from titles with the extension I wrote is - not gonna happen.

I would instead petition for the phpBB core to consider removing them, if they truly do serve no purpose and are deemed an outdated concept. This extension would easily be able to be updated to continue doing its normal task of rewriting reply subjects and leave the omission or comission of "Re" prefixing up to the core.