Integrating Content From Third Party Script into Miraserver Templates

A common question which is asked is how to go about integrating content from a third-party PHP script into your Miraserver-driven website. The procedure for this is laid out below.

It should be noted that this procedure may vary somewhat depending on the script you are trying to integrate.

Okay, let's say you have a PHP script. That script generates it's own output, and when you run that script directly in your web browser, you get the desired output. The trick is to bring this output into your Miraserver template system.

The Miraserver template system works through the use of template variables. A template variable is located inside of a template, and is assigned a value dynamically when a user visits your website. Since most third-party PHP scripts echo output to the browser directly, they are not set up to be assigned to a template variable. If you simply include the PHP script in your "phpinclude" template, the output will appear at the very top of the page. What needs to be done here is to use PHP's output buffering capability to capture the content of the PHP script and assign it to a variable.

Using your phpinclude template in Miraserver, let's integrate a theoretical script called last10.php. Let us assume that last10.php is designed to pull the latest 10 threads from your vBulletin database (or any forum software) and output the thread list to the screen. You have modified last10.php so that it's output looks right, but you need to pull it into your Miraserver-powered website. So, include the following code into your phpinclude template:

ob_start();
require("/full/path/to/last10.php");
$last10 = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
mira_select_db($db_name,$db);

What this code does is starts output buffering, grabs the content of last10.php, assigns it to a PHP variable called $last10, and cleans the output buffer. The last line is intended to re-select the Miraserver database. This last line is not always necessary. It would not be necessary if the third-party script has no database activity or is querying the same database which contains Miraserver. Our example, though, assumes we are connecting to vBulletin, and in order to do that, that script is connecting to and selecting the VB database. In order to continue operating Miraserver after including last10.php, we must re-select the Miraserver database.

After running the above code in your phpinclude template, you have the output of last10.php assigned to a variable called $last10. Now all you need to do is assign that variable to a template variable and you are set to go. The template assignment (in version 1.0 or prior) must be made in the PHP file itself. So, open the PHP file in a text editor (article.php, index.php, etc) and, anywhere after

$tpl->prepare();

assign the variable with the following:

$tpl->assign("last10", $last10);

Now, anywhere in your templates (for example the main template), you can insert the variable and it will render your 10 latest threads.