First Plugin

Hi Chris,

It sure is possible. You’d need to look into creating a Module so you can have your own database table(s) for this functionality. Then you’d have a module file that supports tags like {exp:your_module:member_button id="4"} and the HTML for the button / link is returned.

There are a number of things to learn along the way, so it depends on the full scope of your requirements. Here are a few links that might help:

http://ellislab.com/expressionengine/user-guide/development/module_tutorial.html http://ellislab.com/expressionengine/user-guide/development/packages.html

Erik

Hi Erik.

Thank you for getting back to me.

Since posting this thread I have been reading up on everything I can find, and have started building my module.

I so far have it so on install it creates a table, with id, follow id (profile member id) and member id (logged in member id). I have a form which has the param ‘follow_id’. When the form is submitted I have just about managed to get it to store the info in the database, and it works.

It currently creates a new row for each submission. I am hoping I can find a way to store multiple ‘follow_id’s’ in the same row separated with a line (1|2|3) and have one row per member id. My aim is to then print these id’s into the channel entries tag pairs param entry_id. Is this possible?

My current function to add to the db is, could possibly you show me how I would achieve the above?

public function follow_user() {
     
     $follow_id = $this->EE->input->post("follow_id", TRUE);  
     $member_id = $this->EE->session->userdata('member_id');  
     
     $data = array(
      "follow_id" => $follow_id,
      "member_id" => $member_id
     );

     $this->EE->db->insert('follow', $data);  
    
    }

Many Thanks

I’d recommend keeping each follow in a separate row and just letting your select query + some php create a string like 1|2|3|4. By doing that you can get more creative with sql down the road if you try to add new functionality.

Thank you for your advice.

I think I know how to do this. I can use the query module and output the member ids into an embed. Then in the embed file have the expression engine entries tag pair and place the embed variable in the author param.

Thank you!