F/t and a Cms session id's. Could f/t zap my Cms session?

[mrsalvage]

I haven't made it far enough into the code yet to know this answer. So I want to ask in general how sessions are handled with f/t.

Here is two threads where I tried to get tectite setup in a Cms.

http://www.tectite.com/vbforums/showthread.php?t=3442

http://community.impresscms.org/modules/...=0&start=0

Granted this isn't tectite but thought I should at least ask...

I can't really trim those old posts so you need to read thru some of the distractions in them.

Now my plan for f/t is to wrap it in a cms or two. Impress and drupal come to mind because I like those the best. No other specific reason. I did study the code for w/p and it gave me some ideas.

So what do you think will f/t destroy a cms's session?

[Ben]

EXCELLENT question. The short answer is: I don't know for sure. But I can make a few comments.

First off, the Form Tools Core namespaces all of its sessions here: $_SESSION["ft"]. So whenever you log in and use the script, all session info is stashed in there. The idea was that in theory, it would play nice with other script running on the server.

But when I integrated Form Tools to run within Wordpress I ran into problems with Form Tools Core functions that required sessions running from within Wordpress - which doesn't use sessions.

For other scripts that DO use sessions, the biggest concern I have would be whether or not FT clears those sessions on logging in and out. I suspect NOT, since I think it only clears the $_SESSION["ft"] contents, but I'm not 100% sure...

The other problem is of course, whether or not the CMS you pick will be nice to Form Tools.

If you have any luck with it (or if you have problems!) let me know. I haven't visited the Wordpress FT module for some time & I've always wanted to integrate Form Tools into other CMSs like Drupal & Joomla.

- Ben

[mrsalvage]

Thanks man for the positive post. That encourages me to push a little further with this idea.

How hard would it be on your end to create a generic api specifically for other devs to hook into this system?

Would you need some help? Maybe you already have that api and I didn't find it.

Tia for your time...
Billy

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Also let me add a thread from impressCms...

http://community.impresscms.org/modules/...mpost40090

Also I was reminded of a bootstrap method for impress. It's really a good read but goes in the other direction than what I had envisioned.

http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/impress...rap/htdocs

Some code

http://impresscms.svn.sourceforge.net/vi...5&r2=19564

[Ben]

Hey Billy,

How hard would it be on your end to create a generic api specifically for other devs to hook into this system?

Yeah, I thought about that too, but I don't think it's really feasible. Take Form Tools' main submission listing page for example: there's SO much going on on that page - not just on the backend (figuring out which form, which View, which fields to show, whether or not the current user is allowed to see the info, etc.) but also on the client-side: figuring out which CSS and JS to include for the functionality required. And in addition to that, there's then the modules which plug into the page - which can extend that page in any which way.

So realistically I figured there's no way to provide an API to allow developers to embed all that functionality into another system / CMS - it's just too broad.

That said, something like it is possible by doing it manually - like with the Wordpress plugin, which utilizes a few core functions. But this approach will always result in a subset of the overall functionality.

I'm not at all averse to a major refactor of the Form Tools code to allow for integration with 3rd party scripts, but quite honestly I don't know how to tackle it! Scripts come in all shapes and sizes, and I haven't found a solution that would work for all scenarios... it seems like shooting for integrating a subset of the overall Form Tools functionality may be the most realistic approach. But I could be wrong.

It's a tricky problem, I know!

- Ben