Flarum + Django (flarum-ext-django)

WaldemarHamm

https://github.com/Braintelligence/flarum-ext-django
https://github.com/Braintelligence/django-flarum

Current Todos
1. Implement either session sharing (interfacing database) or session passing (interfacing API).
2. Implement either user-info sharing (make Flarum use Django's database and extend Django's user model by Flarum user-attributes) or user-info passing (interfacing API).
3. Think of how to embed Flarum rendering PHP-Code into Django HTML-Template without having to resort to iFrames. (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/36210588/embed-php-app-into-django-rendered-html-template)

Hi everyone ?

I'd like to use Flarum on my website that is based on Django.
So basically I'd need a way to bridge my Django-users to Flarum and maybe make some of the Flarum-content availiable to Django, via templatetags for example.

Could you guide me towards a way to bridge users between these two? ?

Franz

WaldemarHamm Hello! ?

For getting data from Flarum to your site, you can probably use the API.

Regarding authentication, that's tricky. Our authentication system is written to be easy to exchange, however we obviously cannot bridge to the Python code directly.

Some third-party solution, like LDAP(?) or OAuth would have to be used, I assume. Or you could write an adapter for our authentication system that tries to read and write Django's cookies, while also accessing its database for the user data.

WaldemarHamm

Franz
Thanks for this uber swift reply! ?
You know, I was looking and pondering over what django-compatible forum software to use. Also looked at bridges.

Then I stumbled upon this optical orgasm of a forum software.

I'd love to create a django package that would bridge this software as best as possible. You might reach a whole new batch of users by that.

Since you have an API, fetching data should be a breeze.

Regarding authentication I'd rather not require third-party solutions. The latter option sounds good.

But what about providing user info through the django database as well? Say I have a User model within django and serve user profiles there. What would be the best approach to serve Flarum all those user details?

Franz

WaldemarHamm Say I have a User model within django and serve user profiles there. What would be the best approach to serve Flarum all those user details?

You'll need to write a bit of PHP to tell Flarum where it should get its user info from, probably as an extension...

This part is not really documented at the moment, you'd have to do some digging. But we'll gladly help you.

WaldemarHamm

Franz Ok so I'd need to look at Flarum and what user data it serves. Then I should provide all that data as attribute fields in my django user model.

I'd then need to write PHP to let Flarum know where and how to access that data instead of using its own.

Since Django is kind of database-agnostic my first question here would be if Flarum requires a specific database-type. Personally I prefer PostgreSQL for various reasons.

Franz

WaldemarHamm Right now, we require MySQL, but Postgres support is in the works.

WaldemarHamm

Franz Sadly Django requires for some features that you use PostgreSQL. For example for Numeric Range fields or a very prominent example: for some GIS-packages. That's why often PostgreSQL is used.

Do you have an idea what milestone could embrace PostgreSQL? Depending on that I will decide my next steps ?.

jordanjay29

WaldemarHamm There was a member working on postgres support.

WaldemarHamm

jordanjay29 That's great! Could you direct me to his/her work, so I can look up the progress? Would be a bummer if I finished everything up to the point where I really need a database connection and then have to wait for a few months ^{^.}
I'd try to work with MySQL first if that's the case.

Franz

WaldemarHamm Here you go, there's already a pull request in progress: https://github.com/flarum/core/pull/856

WaldemarHamm

Franz That's great! Looks like it's very well on its way. I will consider PostgreSQL as the standard then and begin the development as soon as I can (next month I guess).
Thanks a lot ? ?

jordanjay29

Franz WaldemarHamm Ha, I also linked his repo in my post. ?

WaldemarHamm

jordanjay29 Duh, I missed it, sorry xD. I'm kinda filtering single-word links in my head whose linktext is a name of something because there are sites using some JS to add all kinds of ad-links to words that trigger them. Thank you ?. ?

jordanjay29

WaldemarHamm Ugh, I hate those sites. That's why I browse with addons like uBlock for the most part.

WaldemarHamm

Franz From looking at some old solutions for bridging php in general and also phpbb it looks like people try to store the Session ID/Cookies-Stuff into a database on the Django-side and then having the PHP-side look at it and pass the cookie on to the PHP-app.
Any objections to this concept?

WaldemarHamm

Maybe it would be possible to instead have Django serve an API that provides user-info, so we could skip the whole database shenanigans on the PHP-side?
But how do I ensure data-security in that case? Password-protection for the API? Localhost-enforcement? Both? Something else?

WaldemarHamm

I'm also not sure about how to render Flarum inside a HTML-template that is used by Django. There seems to be no "best practice" for using inline PHP in the HTML-template because the very thought of doing so is frowned upon.

The easy way could be to serve Flarum on a subdomain or subpath where the webserver expects PHP instead of the Django entrypoint.

But then I'd need to make everything that Django provides (e.g. user info, private message count, newest blog articles, and whatever I may think of that is visible outside of the content wrapper) accessible via API, so I can still show it in the PHP-environment via PHP that Flarum needs.

So either I manage to run inline PHP code within the Django template engine or I have to write an API for a ****ton of stuff to pass it over to Flarum.

Am I missing something here? What would be the best approach?

luceos

WaldemarHamm embed functionality is planned, also to support embedding with Wordpress.

Still thinking about all this. And not sure how to assist you further.

WaldemarHamm

luceos It's one thing to embed a PHP-app into another PHP-app, or to put it in other words: Have one specific URL serve PHP.
It's another thing having one specific URL serve Python AND PHP and then everything inside a Python-Webframework.