Extern Problems

I am not sure, phpinfo says something about zend extension and shows this

This program makes use of the Zend Scripting Language Engine:
Zend Engine v1.3.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2003 Zend Technologies

Is that what you mean. I can use extern perfectly provided I use the url rather than a relative (or absolute) address. Strangely, I did get it working once with a relative address by using require instead of include.

JohnS I think has a slightly different problem because he has trouble even with url's.

EDIT

Read the article you referred to. using @include resolves  the problems when using a url but it doesn't help with relative addressing and I don't really want to have to use a url to include a local file.

Paul: The Zend Engine is something different from Zend Optimizer.

JohnS: If it can't find the file at all, you would get a different error message, so the path is most likely correct.

What PHP versions are you using?

Here's how to check if Zend Optimizer is running.

In that case, I really have no idea what might be wrong. I very much doubt it's a bug in PunBB. Have you tried googling and trying out some possible solutions from the search results?

I don't use extern.php, because I need access to $cur_user['style'] to be able to show the same style on the site as in the forums.

Here's some code:

<?php

define('PUN_TURN_OFF_MAINT', 1);
define('PUN_QUIET_VISIT', 1);

$pun_root = '../forums/';
@include $pun_root.'include/common.php';

// If PUN isn't defined, config.php is missing or corrupt
if (!defined('PUN'))
    exit('config.php doesn\'t exist or is corrupt. Please run install.php to install PunBB first.');

?>

And then the topic list:

<?php

$result = $db->query('SELECT t.id, t.subject FROM '.$db->prefix.'topics AS t,'.$db->prefix.'forums AS f WHERE t.forum_id=f.id AND f.admmod_only=0 AND t.moved_to IS NULL ORDER BY t.last_post LIMIT 15') or error('Unable to fetch topic list', __FILE__, __LINE__, $db->error());

while ($cur_topic = $db->fetch_assoc($result))
{
    if ($pun_config['o_censoring'] == '1')
        $cur_topic['subject'] = censor_words($cur_topic['subject']);

    if (pun_strlen($cur_topic['subject']) > 30)
        $cur_topic['subject'] = trim(substr($cur_topic['subject'], 0, 24)).' ...';

    echo "\t\t\t\t\t\t\t".'<b>·</b> <a href="http://punbb.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id='.$cur_topic['id'].'">'.pun_htmlspecialchars($cur_topic['subject']).'</a><br>'."\n";
}

?>

Zend Engine V.1.3.0
Zend Optimizer V.2.1.0
PHP V.4.3.2

BTW: I've used @include with the full url (as Paul suggested) and it now works fine but it does seem strange why I can't just use a relative path...

I've more chance of understanding Swedish than coding :x

Oh, My God!
I've more chance of learning Russian, Chinese, etc. etc. ...

So. What do I do? Keep using @include?

Either that or forget extern and use the code Rickard posted. I will give that a shot and seen what happens. I will let you know. Of course, you could use SSI in the form of the examples given.

One final thing I am going to try is to make a modified version of extern that does not require parameters. The idea it to turn the relevant parts of extern into functions which can be called using parameters after it has been included using a local address. That way it would be possible to include active topics and newest topics etc on the same page with only one include, I think.

[EDIT] Rant deleted. I get it

It's OK Louis. I got it. Nobody told me that there were problems passing parameters/arguments using a local address. I have now made a new version of extern.php which is externlocal.php which includes a function called show_pun. To use it locally I can just do this

include('../punbb/externlocal.php');
show_pun('active',12);
show_pun('new', 5);
show_pun('online');
show_pun('stats');

The only benefits of doing it this way is that local addresses can be used and if you want to show several bits of information from PunBB you only have to include the file once. If you only want to show active topics then Rickards PunBB.org code would seem to be neater.

Note to self. File can be simplified; why would anybody want to use an RSS feed on the same site that houses the forum.

JohnS. This could be the neatest solution for you. I will post the file as soon as I have finished tinkering.