How Do I Call a Variable From a vBulletin Plugin?

Registering variables in your vBulletin plugin lets you access them in the page's template or in another existing template. VBulletin is a popular commercial software package that helps you host a forum on your website. Before version 4 of vBulletin, it was possible to automatically access variables in templates. Since version 4 it's necessary to call the "preRegister" method to register variables with a specific template before you can access them.

Instructions

1. Open your vBulletin plugin with a text editor, such as Windows Notepad.

2. Declare variables and initialize them with values in your plugin by adding the following code:

   $my_str = "hi";
   $my_arr = array(
   'apple' => 'red',
   'banana' => 'yellow'
   );

3. Register your variables and save them into an array by adding the following code after the lines declaring your variables:

   $mytemplater = vB_Template::create('mytemplate');
   $mytemplater->register('my_str', $my_str);
   $mytemplater->register('my_arr', $my_arr);
   $myrendervar = $mytemplater->render();
   vB_Template::preRegister('FORUMHOME',array('myrendervar ' => $myrendervar));

   The "preRegister" method ensures that your data passes to an existing template before it's rendered. Replace "FORUMHOME" with the template you want to pass the data to.

4. Save the vBulletin plugin and close the file.

5. Open the source file of the template you preregistered the variables to in a text editor, such as Windows Notepad.

6. Access your variables by adding the following code in your template file:

   {vb:raw myrendervar}

7. Save the template file. Upload both files to the forum's server to update the plugin and template.

References

• VBulletin: Including External Files