Smartfeed

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Brief Description of Smartfeed

The extension does not work with versions 2.0 or 3.0. The mod does not work with versions 3.1 or greater.

Provides RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 customized newsfeeds for phpBB forums. Users select forums they want, including protected forums if they can access them. Administrators can incorporate external news sources (if available as a feed) into their feeds.

Note: As of phpBB 3.0.6, phpBB has a basic Atom 1.0 newsfeed feature. If your needs are simple, this may be all that you need. You might want to read phpBB’s Atom FAQ. If you need authenticated access, have complex needs for the content of your feeds, or need RSS 1.0 or RSS 2.0 feeds for your board, Smartfeed is the extension of choice. It will not conflict with the new Atom Feed feature in phpBB.

Detailed Description of Smartfeed

phpBB forums may contain restricted forums that should not normally be exposed as a feed. Smartfeed is a phpBB extension and modification that allows users to get a newsfeed for selected forums, including restricted forums if they have the privilege. This is done by using an interface program that appears on the navigation bar or breadcrumb menu after installation. Smartfeed is smart enough to keep users out of forums for which they do not have access, even if they hack parameters on the URL field. Authentication is handled via a URL key/value parameter that encrypts the user’s password hash in the database. Those who are not registered can access in the newsfeed only those forums that can be read by the public.

The URL generated is then copied and pasted by the user into a newsreader. RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 and ATOM 1.0 newsfeeds are supported. ATOM 1.0 is the default for the extension. RSS 2.0 is the default for the modification.

External feeds are integrated using the PHP SimplePie library, which is integrated into both the modification and extension.

This has been tested, but not extensively, by validating reasonably complex feeds for RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 and ATOM 1.0 at http://validator.w3.org/feed/.

It has been tested on a MySQL 5.0 environment only but should be DBAL compliant.

Screenshots

[Show slideshow]

Smartfeed extension for phpBB 3.1 and higher

GitHub

• Public Smartfeed extension on GitHub

Support

Release notes and discussion are on the Smartfeed extension’s discussion area.

Versions

• 3.0.17 – Approved version available on phpbb.com. Supports phpBB 3.3 only. Bug fixes. (March 4, 2022, approved June 10, 2022)
• 3.0.16 – Works on phpBB 3.3 only. New features include a public-only feed and topic-only feed. (October 12, 2021)
• 3.0.15 – Works on phpBB 3.3 only. Allows admins to pick location for Smartfeed link. (August 13, 2021)
• 3.0.14 – Works on phpBB 3.2 and 3.3. No new functionality. Mostly clean up and bug fixes. (July 23, 2020)
• 3.0.13 – Works on phpBB 3.2 and 3.3, no new functionality (January 17, 2020)
• 3.0.12 – Minor fixes (October 18, 2019)
• 3.0.11 – No new functionality of note, but bug fixes (October 12, 2019)
• 3.0.10 – Test button replaced with View feed button (April 14, 2019)
• 3.0.9 – New features: last topics of post only, suppress forum names in feed, show topic title instead of post subject in feed, suppress usernames in feed (April 27, 2018)
• 3.0.8 – Approved version available on phpbb.com. Supports phpBB 3.2 only (June 22, 2017) – uses a better encryption algorithm. New URLs are needed to retrieve a feed.
• 3.0.7 – Supports phpBB 3.1 and 3.2 (May 20, 2017) – openssl is now used instead of mcrypt. New URLs may be needed to retrieve a feed.
• 3.0.6 – Supports phpBB 3.2 Rhea (January 9, 2017)
• 3.0.5 – Integrates external feeds (August 23, 2016)
• 3.0.4 – First approved version (April 3, 2016)
• 3.0.3 RC2 (January 27, 2016)
• 3.0.2 RC1 (December 5, 2015)
• 3.0.1 Beta (November 19, 2015)
• 3.0.0 Development (October 3, 2015)

Language translations

• Russian (supports version 3.0.4) – provided by hd321kbps
• German (supports version 3.0.8) – provided by Michael Kossyk

If you have a translation, please let me know. Make sure to place it on GitHub!

Features in the modification not in the extension

• You cannot hide Smartfeed sessions. In most cases Smartfeed sessions will show up as guest sessions.
• You cannot specify a proxy IP. If you want to use the IP authentication feature, it will apply only to your IP at the time you generated the URI. If your IP changes you will have to regenerate the URI using the Smartfeed user interface.
• You cannot generate a new Smartfeed key.
• You lose the ability to see protected forums if openssl is not compiled into PHP. Fortunately, it usually is compiled into PHP so it’s probably not a concern. As a result the PHP Secure Communications library is not part of the extension.
• The feedcreator class is no longer used. Instead, phpBB’s template engine is used to generate feeds.

Features changed from the modification

• The URL for the feed has changed due to the extensions architecture. Previously it was http://www.yoursite.com/yourforum/smartfeed.php. Now it is http://www.yoursite.com/yourforum/app.php/smartfeed/feed. Similarly the URL generator program was http://www.yoursite.com/yourforum/smartfeed_url.php and is now http://www.yoursite.com/yourforum/app.php/smartfeed/ui. Consequently, users will have to generate a new URI to use the Smartfeed extension.
• Not only is the URI changed, the URI argument names have changed to try to make the URI more concise:

// These constants are used to identify URI key/value pair associations. Note these have changed since the phpBB 3.0 mod so URIs will be shorter.
define('SMARTFEED_BOOKMARKS', 'b'); // was bookmarks
define('SMARTFEED_ENCRYPTION_KEY', 'e'); // unchanged
define('SMARTFEED_FEED_STYLE', 'd'); // was feed_style
define('SMARTFEED_FEED_TYPE', 'y'); // was feed_type
define('SMARTFEED_FILTER_FOES', 'ff'); // was filter_foes
define('SMARTFEED_FIRST_POST', 'fp'); // was firstpostonly
define('SMARTFEED_FORUMS', 'f'); // was forum
define('SMARTFEED_LAST_VISIT', 'l'); // was lastvisit
define('SMARTFEED_MARK_PRIVATE_MESSAGES', 'k'); // was pms
define('SMARTFEED_MAX_ITEMS', 'x'); // was count_limit
define('SMARTFEED_MAX_WORDS', 'w'); // was max_word_size
define('SMARTFEED_MIN_WORDS', 'i'); // was min_word_size
define('SMARTFEED_PRIVATE_MESSAGE', 'm'); // was pms
define('SMARTFEED_REMOVE_MINE', 'r'); // was removemine
define('SMARTFEED_SORT_BY', 's'); // was sort_by
define('SMARTFEED_TIME_LIMIT', 't'); // was limit
define('SMARTFEED_USER_ID', 'u'); // unchanged

Smartfeed modification for phpBB 3.0

As of August 2009, a phpBB approved mod is available.

Support

I don’t actively support the modification anymore since phpBB has evolved to use extensions instead. No new versions of the modification for phpBB 3.0 will be produced.

Versions

• 2.2.27 (01/05/2015)
• 2.2.26 (06/15/2013)
• 2.2.25 (10/01/2012)
• 2.2.24 (06/11/2012)
• 2.2.23 (03/24/2012)
• 2.2.22 (12/28/2010)
• 2.2.21 (12/20/2010)
• 2.2.20 (10/17/2010)
• 2.2.19 (09/06/2010)
• 2.2.18 (06/27/2010)
• 2.2.17 (12/24/2009)
• 2.2.16 (12/06/2009)
• 2.2.15 (11/21/2009)
• 2.2.14 (09/17/2009)
• 2.2.13 (08/21/2009)
• 2.2.12 (07/24/2009)
• 2.2.11 (07/17/2009)
• 2.2.10 (06/10/2009)
• 2.2.9 (06/10/2009)
• 2.2.8 (04/23/2009)
• 2.2.7 (02/24/2009)
• 2.2.6 (12/29/2008)
• 2.2.5 (11/21/2008)
• 2.2.4 (10/09/2008)
• 2.2.3 (08/07/2008)
• 2.2.2 (07/06/2008)
• 2.2.1 (07/06/2008)
• 2.2.0 (07/06/2008)
• 2.1.1 (06/07/2008)
• 2.1.0 (05/25/2008)
• 2.0.4 (04/26/2008)
• 2.0.RC3 (04/12/2008)
• 2.0.RC2 (03/30/2008)
• 2.0.RC1 (03/28/2008)
• 2.0.0.e (Beta Version 3) (03/14/2008)
• 2.0.0.d (Beta Version 2) (03/06/2008)
• 2.0.0.c (Beta Version 1) (02/17/2008)
• 2.0.0.b (was 2.0.0 Alpha 2) (02/01/2008)
• 2.0.0.a (was 2.0.0 Alpha Version 1) (01/12/2008)

Smartfeed modification for phpBB 2.0

Support

No further work will be done on these versions. If you want paid support, send me an inquiry.

Versions

• 1.22 (02/02/2008)
• 1.21 (11/12/2007)
• 1.2 (11/02/2007)
• 1.12 (09/03/2007)
• 1.11 (02/25/2007)
• 1.1 (01/15/2007)
• 1.0.5 (05/13/2006) – archive missing
• 1.0.4 (03/12/2006)
• 1.0.3 (03/05/2006)
• 1.0.2 (03/01/2006)
• 1.0.1 (02/26/2006)
• 1.0.0 (02/25/2006)
• 0.4 (02/20/2006)
• 0.3 (07/07/2005)
• 0.2 (01/21/2006)
• 0.1 (01/06/2006)
• 0.0.2 (01/02/2006)
• 0.0.1 (01/01/2006)
• 0.0.0 (12/29/2005)

Page last updated October 12, 2021