Application API / Back-end to vBulletin

[alakazam]

Hi,

I know that vBulletin is a forum with which you're supposed to interact through its HTML GUI. However, I'm thinking about working on an application which should interface with a vBulletin server, and was wondering if there's a second, background, interface (PHP, CGI, etc) that is more geared towards applications accessing the forum (posting, reading, getting listings, etc).

For instance, instead of the front page being displayed with all the HTML tags, formatting and whatnot, I'd like an interface that returns data in a similar fashion to the attached file (it is an XML Property List, but the idea is the same)

[feldon23]

Your best bet is to build a custom Style that generates the forum or thread displays as XML. All of the HTML and CSS that vBulletin displays to the user are stored in ~150 Templates. Without any programming, you can completely customize the HTML/CSS output of vBulletin by editing these templates.

vBulletin is a PHP/MySQL app, not CGI. There is nothing preventing you from writing your own PHP script that uses the same MySQL login/password and pulls data from the database. But knowing what to do with that data is the trick. You can't just say "pull thread #40391". You have to pull info from the post, thread, forum, user, avatar, and many other tables, and mux that information all together and then parse through it.

vBulletin doesn't have a proper API. They have a document they call an API which is just a list of functions. But there is no documentation telling you how vBulletin parses, assembles, or stores its data. There's no How To for someone who wants to be able to create a user, create a thread, read back a thread, etc.

[Riasat]

vB needs built-in JSON support. period.

[Removed-836727]

vBulletin doesn't have a proper API. They have a document they call an API which is just a list of functions. But there is no documentation telling you how vBulletin parses, assembles, or stores its data. There's no How To for someone who wants to be able to create a user, create a thread, read back a thread, etc.

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=242
http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=187
There are great articles how to create user,thread,post,pm with the vB Datamanagers

[feldon23]

Those were created by users and haven't been updated.

To date, despite numerous requests, there has been no vBulletin database schema. For example:

[Removed-836727]

Those were created by users and haven't been updated.

To date, despite numerous requests, there has been no vBulletin database schema. For example:

What should be updated there? They are all still working