New posts in topics. (Page 1 of 2)

This has been requested before. However, it's not something that is implemented in an hour. I have yet to see a fast, scalable and pretty solution to the problem. We'll see. I'll put it on the wishlist for 1.2 :)

By that you mean vBulletin 3 right? vBulletin 2.x works almost identical to the way PunBB works.

yeah, i got users saying it is very annoying that the posts are not marked as read. And if they post their own post is marked as unread.... but whatever i just tell they have to live with it
i'll just patiently wait till the feature is implemented

You're right, but how's that normally solved? I can hardly imagine keeping a field for every user on a topic, or for every topic on a user... never thought of this problem before.

Ugly ugly solutions. Well, if there's not a very elegant and execution-quick way to solve this one, I think it's better left undone.

Hmmm well, every situation has its pros and cons, but in this case, I'd say there's no way you can keep that in a server's memory, although it could be a session object (although I find that a lousy solution since it adds innecessary load to the server). Or a variable passed to the browser... I list all new topics since last visit (just like now at session start), and send you the id's in a cookie, on the next hit, I'll first add all new posts to the cookie, then substract the one you're requesting and show the rest as new when you hit the topic page again.
I think that's the best I could come up with, and I'm not sure it's even good.

Heh, yep, store as little as possible

MarcB: memory isn't that expencive
nah, really, if you check into it... what this table would need to store, is like 30 bytes per read post for that session ... (user id = int(10), topic id = int(10), unix timestamp =int(10) == 30bytes) ... and if you would have a whooping 64MB table, that would give the possibility to have 2'236'962 read posts in store for that session, and considering that the cookie will default time out in like 10 minutes or so, you either should have a very quick hand or an extreme wide audience ... just over 3700 pageviews/s (Edit: forum pageviews that is)

Ok, first of all. People all over the world have been using vBulletin 2 (which works just like PunBB) for years now and I have never ever seen anyone "complain" about it there. What's up?

There are known implementations, but they are all ugly. The most common implementation is storing the topics you've read in an array that is then serialized and saved in a cookie. I believe this is also the simplest way of doing it. There are issues though. How long should you wait before a topic is considered unread again? How many topics should the forum keep track of? If your visiting a large forum with topic IDs like 231874 and you read 200 topics, that cookie will become quite large (about 2000 bytes).

The second possible solution is using the database like Frank H suggested. However, it would mean at least two to three more queries (SELECT read topics, UPDATE new topics and DELETE old topics) for every single page view. Sure, one could use a HEAP table that will speed it up, but there's still the general communication overhead when talking to the database. Also, HEAP tables are only supported by MySQL and most hosts have set MAX_ROWS to a low value so that their customers don't use up too much memory.

The jury's still out on this one.

Actually, it's only 12 bytes. An integer takes up 4 bytes (32 bits).

MAX_ROWS will limit the number of rows in a HEAP table long before that.

Yep, since we can easily see the date of last post...

waiiiit i think I got it... it seems to work..  should be ready tonight (with only one small cookie, and one db query) Ok, here is a beginning; shows unread threads, but not unread forums, is not that perfect but seems to work:

add this to viewtopic.php, at the beginning:

if ($_COOKIE['unreadtopicscookie'] != '') {
    $unreadtopics = array();
    $unreadtopics = unserialize(stripslashes($_COOKIE['unreadtopicscookie']));
    unset($unreadtopics[array_search($_GET['id'], $unreadtopics)]);
    setcookie('unreadtopicscookie', serialize($unreadtopics), time()+60*60*24*335); /* One year cookie*/
}

and add this to viewforum.php (below the two includes):

if ($_COOKIE['unreadtopicscookie'] != '') {
    $unreadtopics = array();
    $unreadtopics = unserialize(stripslashes($_COOKIE['unreadtopicscookie']));

    $result = $db->query('SELECT id , last_post FROM '.$db->prefix.'topics') or error('Unable to fetch forum info', __FILE__, __LINE__, $db->error());

    while ($row = $db->fetch_row($result))
    if ($row[1]>$cur_user['last_visit'] && !in_array($row[0], $unreadtopics))
        array_push($unreadtopics, $row[0]);

    setcookie('unreadtopicscookie', serialize($unreadtopics), time()+60*60*24*335); /* One year cookie*/
} else {
    $unreadtopics = array();
}       

And finally in viewforum.php, where the test if the topic is read or not (should be approximatively at line 165), replace the condition with:
if (!$cookie['is_guest'] && in_array($cur_topic['id'], $unreadtopics) && $cur_topic['moved_to'] == null)

I'll try to cleanup all that stuff, and make it work in the listing of the forums, too... help would be much appreciated.
++

I forgot, turn Visit timeout to 0 in the admin panel.
BTW, in misc.php, add :
setcookie('unreadtopicscookie', '', time()+60*60*24*335);
in the else if ($action == 'markread') statement.

mmmh, in fact alll what I need are the newest topics... i'll try adding a where clause.
NB: is it possible to discuss with you via irc, icq, other? might be easier.
+

$result = $db->query('SELECT id , last_post FROM '.$db->prefix.'topics where last_post>'.$cur_user['last_visit']) or error('Unable to fetch forum info', __FILE__, __LINE__, $db->error());

while ($row = $db->fetch_row($result))
    if (!in_array($row[0], $unreadtopics))
        array_push($unreadtopics, $row[0]);

better so?