Joomla! Discussion Forums

Bridging project - vbulletin 3.6.x and joomla 1.5.x

http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,123282.0.html

mlorr0 http://forum.joomla.org/index.php?action=profile;u=60077

it looks like CoolAcid is trying to help him.

Predator / Leonsio - any tips / suggestions for them ?

As I noted in that thread there is a bug in Joomla 1.5 on PHP 5.0.5 that is preventing the installation of ANYTHING -- component, module, plugin. Until that is resolved 1.5 has to wait.

So I've decided to move to 1.0.  I looked at vbridge -- FAR AND AWAY too many code hacks to be acceptable.

So I'm going to approach this from the vbulletin side for the most part.  I will write a module that will present a login form in a Joomla page, but vbulletin will manage login and logout.  This is the approach I intend -- when a user logs in on vbulletin I'll use hook location login_process to create a joomla session in the cookie, then create a user entry on the jos_user table, then make an entry on the jos_session table.  Then, using plugin login_redirect if the user is coming from joomla they'll get returned there.  To the majority of the public the integration will seem seamless.

One fault in this approach is that Joomla user management will have to be turned off entirely.  In this arrangement it becomes entirely subservient to vbulletin. All user management will have to occur in the vbulletin admin control panel, not in Joomla.

What I need to figure out is how to create a Joomla password hash (I'll need to extract the password from vbulletin and I'm posting a question to this effect on vb.org) and a session hash that will "fool" joomla into thinking it created it (when in reality vbulletin created it).

Any help in these tasks or pointers on where to look in the joomla source code would be appreciated.

I have joomla authing off a vbulletin password hash.  I hope to have something by tomorrow night.  I'm going to use Predator's vBridge hack to spot the locations needing to be hacked and proceed from there.  It will be slow going though - some of the hack points have jumped by several hundred lines.

Awesome !  There is much demand for something like this 

I know.  I lost $20 to bbpixel because they claimed to have a working bridge - it works if you don't want to log in as admin.  So back to the dredge work.

As of this hour I have managed to get Joomla to auth off of a vbulletin session cookie.  It is no longer able to maintain session cookies of it's own because when $mainFrame->initSession is called the necessary lines of Jelsoft's init.php file get passed through.

Rather than copy copious amounts of vb code (illegal) I devised a database wrapper class for Jelsoft's existing database.  It takes the connection resource Id from the Joomla database object and uses that to run it's queries.  What this means to anyone dev'ing components based off this hack is that most, though certainly not all, of vbulletin's classes can be instatiated and expected to work.

I'm working on this as quickly as I can, but even once I put something out it will be labeled as alpha.  Since this hack replaces key security routines in Joomla with their equivalents in vbulletin it needs a thorough inspection before being turned loose on a production board.

I got bbpixel's plugin to work and it works well for those in a hurry.  Also I will venture that if you need something to add vbulletin to an existing joomla installation that will best serve your needs.

The bridge I'm working on will tack joomla onto an existing vbulletin installation, but not the reverse.  It works by calling vbulletin's global.php file at the start of the indexes and Joomla session and user controls are disabled.  Joomla authenticates simply by looking at the $vbulletin class object created by the global.php.

I have the frontend working.  I'm working on the backend today and tomorrow then I will release an alpha copy on vbulletin.org.  I'm not sure I need to release it over here because due to the nature of how it's written it isn't going to be of any use to a joomla site wanting to splice on vbulletin.  It will be of enormous help to a vbulletin site looking for a CMS system however, as joomla simply is the best.

You can see at http://www.sportsinferno.com how we implimented Joomla and vB, but I read this thread everyday looking for and hoping you develop a better option.

I have an alpha version with frontend and backend logins working now.  If you have a development platform I can send you the files but be forewarned, theres no installer (yet) so setup will NOT be easy.

Is this with J!1.5beta and the latest vB ?

I suppose it doesn't matter what Joomla! version you use in your authentication scheme.

No, it's 1.0.12.  I still can't get 1.5 to even install a component though I think that's more my version of PHP than Joomla 1.5.  Until that's resolved I can't use 1.5

4 joomla files (so far) are hacked.  index.php, includes/joomla.php, administrator/index.php, administrator/index2.php

You'll need someone more tech savvy then I for that..  I'll keep hanging on and watching the show develop..   

mlmorr0 has an alpha for testing.