Couple of Suggestions and a request for advice

[cdn]

Having played with this beast I get more impressed as I get my head around it.

May I suggest a few things that would might help those approaching the beast for the first time ?

1) For development/testing purposes setting the timeout value to a fairly high value.

Eg. $params['timeout'] = 1000 * 60 * 60; gives a decent stay around time.

It can be a little disconcerting when testing across a couple of machines to see nicks dropping off for no apparent reason depending upon the

$params["shownotice"] = 3; // 0 = nothing, 1 = just nickname changes, 2 = connect/quit, 3 = nick + connect/quit

setting.

2) Equally setting the refresh delay to a low level when testing might hammer the server but it gets things responding quickly between machines.

$params["refresh_delay"] = 2000; // chat refresh speed in milli seconds

Finally, a question.

I'm trying to get the object to use a particular nick when the chat object is launched with

<?php $chat->printChat(); ?>

the nick is set with the following code fragment.

if ( isset($_GET['nick']) )
{
$params["nick"] = $_GET['nick']; // setup the intitial nickname
}
else
{
$params["nick"] = "guest"; // setup the intitial nickname
}

By the way isset($_GET['nick'] ) should in this scenario never return false

I'm guessing that a /rehash is required, however is it possible to force the object to perform a /rehash when it is instantiated via something in the $param array ? so that object instantiation forces a /rehash prior to calling:-

<?php $chat->printChat(); ?>

I suspect I'm missing something stupid here

I don't want to hack around inside the object and kludge something as it will break my code whenever a new release becomes available.

Any help gratefully received.

[OldWolf]

You cannot use get/post values anywhere in your parameters. AJAX calls will not use GET/POST so the parameter's end up empty after the initial load.

[cdn]

thx for that old wolf,

So essentially a feature of AJAX type async behaviour then ?

The script then takes its behaviour from what is in private/data/cache and a /rehash simply deletes the session file from the directory and forces the object to refresh itself using the $params block ?

Looks like i have to hit Google and get my Java kit out to get a grip on this <g>

Damn it I'll get my head around this if it kills me

[cdn]

That explains a hack i've seen on this bulletin board that uses $_SESSION inside the object.

I don't want to fiddle with the internals of the class for obvious reasons stated in previous posts.

a little lateral thinking. Could the param block be placed into the $_SESSION array on instantiation ?

[cdn]

ho humm, interesting - i've just fired up the chat room object on two different machines and behaviour is exactly what i would have expected. The param block settings are honoured by both boxes.

Its been a few hours and both machines sessions have timed out. Both machines have picked up the settings given in the param block.

Does this mean that a timeout forces an implicit /rehash ?

[phpfreechat]

No the timeout event do not forces a global /rehash. A user timeout, only clears the user's internal data ("nickmeta").

[cdn]

so on a timeout a users private/data/cache is deleted ?

[cdn]

what precisely does a /rehash do and how does it influence the behaviour of the object ?

[phpfreechat]

No data/private/cache/* files are those which are deleted when a /rehash is done.
User's data are stored in data/private/chat/...

[phpfreechat]

OldWolf wrote some doc about it, please read it: http://www.phpfreechat.net/rehash

[cdn]

No data/private/cache/* files are those which are deleted when a /rehash is done.
User's data are stored in data/private/chat/...

Does this imply in a shared netcafe type environment one has to delete all files in

data/private/cache/*

and

data/private/chat/*

when firing up a new user ?

[cdn]

the session id relates to the ip not the user ?

[phpfreechat]

The /rehash command will clear the cached parameters list. The corresponding file will be deleted in data/private/cache/
Most of the time you don't have to care about where the cached data are stored, you just have to know how to run the /rehash command.

The user timeout thing has nothing to do with rehash thing. When a user is timouted, his internals data are removed (stored somewhere in data/private/chat/ directory) but you also don't have to care about this because the user's internal data will be populated again at next AJAX call. In fact the timeout parameter is a way to know if the user quits the chat by closing his window, or by closing his network connection. Without timeout there is no technical way to know if a user left for these reasons.