CMS Made Simple Forums

Hi!

I am making a website requiring different sets of quotes to appear on different pages. For example, on the home page, I would like that a set of quotes randomly be displayed at a corner.  Then in another section, another set of quotes relevant to that section be displayed randomly in a particular location.  The random_quote tag, however, can only be used for one set, since it accepts only one filename: quotes.txt, which must be placed at the root directory, and does not accept any parameter.  May I request that the functionality of this tag be expanded to accept a text filename (includes pathname) and a webpage id or alias?    Many thanks! 

Search is your friend - have you tried this?

http://dev.cmsmadesimple.org/projects/randomquote/

Yes, that's the one I was refering to when I said:

   

The random_quote tag, however, can only be used for one set, since it accepts only one filename: quotes.txt, which must be placed at the root directory, and does not accept any parameter.  May I request that the functionality of this tag be expanded to accept a text filename (includes pathname) and a webpage id or alias?    Many thanks!

    I need random_quote tag  to accept a filename (with path) as a parameter.  As of now, it accepts a hard-coded file named "quote.txt" that must reside at the root directory.

    I understand its php code but I don't know how to modify it to accept parameter for the smarty tag. I could study it but it will take time.  If cmsms team can do it, I'd appreciate it!   

This is custom module development as nothing like this exists yet (nobody's written it yet).  I wrote the first random quote tag, and it was one of my first CMS projects.  it's outdated now.

Might I suggest, that if you have some available funds, you sponsor Ted, or one of the other dev team members to write such a module.  This would satisfy your needs, contribute to the CMS community, and compensate a developer for relinquishing his (non work time?) time to do development on a task that he's not necessarily focussed on at the moment.

Just my $0.02

scsl wrote:     I understand its php code

OK. You said, you want a solution. You said, you understand php code. Try the attached files. Delete .txt before.

It's a Smarty plugin (not CMSms!) for showing .csv files with templates and has an option to show values randomly.

WARNING: There's NO manual inside !!!

Thank you, calguy.  Thank you, cyberman for the attachments.  Really appreciate it.  It's going to take me a while to read and understand it.  But guess what, I tried my hand on the php code of that plug-in tag (function.random_quote.php).  It works according to what I want.  I added two lines, and commented out one line.

function smarty_cms_function_random_quote($params, &$smarty) {
$delim = "\n";

// $quotefile points to the file that holds the actual quotes

$quotefile = $params['quotefile'];          /* added  */
if (file_exists($quotefile)) {                  /* added  */

// $quotefile = "quotes.txt";        /* commented out */

$fp = fopen($quotefile, "r");
$contents = fread($fp, filesize($quotefile));
$quote_arr = explode($delim,$contents);
fclose($fp);
srand((double)microtime()*1000000);
$quote_index = (rand(1, sizeof($quote_arr)) - 1);
$herequote = $quote_arr[$quote_index];
return $herequote;
}                                                      /* added  */

}


Now, if there is no bug, radom_quote accepts a parameter which is the filename of the quote file with its pathname included:

eg, in the same website,
  in "musicians" section:  {random_quote quotefile='uploads/quotesfiles/quotesmusicians.txt'}
  in "poets" section:  {random_quote quotefile='uploads/quotesfiles/quotespoets.txt'}
  in "sages" section:  {random_quote quotefile='uploads/quotesfiles/quotessages.txt'}

Today is my happy day!!