Turn Active forum on/off programatically?

[Markowitch]

Hi!

Is there any way to turn a forum on and off programatically from an extern script - like a cron job? I need this for scheduled backups

[Markowitch]

Ok - perhaps I could do it this way?

UPDATE vb_settings
SET value = 0
WHERE varname = bbactive

But is this an "ok" way of doing it - or do vbulletin expose an api of some kind?

[Markowitch]

The above manual manipulation of the vbulletin settings table, did not turn the forum off or on.

I suspect that a Data Manager might be the way to go. Can anybody point me to some info on how to use a data manager to turn the board on or off?

[Andy Huang]

I think it's easier with two queries than DM.
Turn off:

UPDATE datastore SET data=REPLACE(data,'s:8:"bbactive";i:1;','s:8:"bbactive";i:0;') WHERE title='options';
UPDATE setting SET value=0 WHERE varname='bbactive';

Turn on:

UPDATE datastore SET data=REPLACE(data,'s:8:"bbactive";i:0;','s:8:"bbactive";i:1;') WHERE title='options';
UPDATE setting SET value=1 WHERE varname='bbactive';

Note: 3.5.x is different. For anyone from 3.5.x looking for similar queries, please open a new thread in the appropriate forum.

[David Grove]

Andy, will that take into account if you have your datastore stored in the filesystem?

[Andy Huang]

Probably not until database is rebuilt, no.
It's what we use to turn forums on and off when people's things gone outta wack -- of course, in those cases, we do set their datastore back to the database so it doesn't hinder anything we do with queries

[David Grove]

One good way to do it with a script might be to first run the update query on the setting table, then call build_datastore() with the appropriate parameters. That is, if you have loaded the vBulletin core.

[Markowitch]

Thanx for the suggestions Andy Huang and sockwater

I'm kind of curious about the build_datastore() method, but to start with, I will go for the solution Andy suggested and then start a thread at vbulletin.org about the build_datastore() method.