Implemented Custom Thread Fields

vbresults

Well-known member
I have received a number of requests from clients to create a custom thread field modification. Much like custom profile fields are useful, custom thread fields would be a fantastic feature. Why? Modifications can use thread-specific data without having to add to or alter the database tables, and this cuts down on a lot of potential headaches. Threads do not just have to be threads any more, they can be whatever you can code them into. Also, things like thread tags and prefixes could be modularized into this single unit.
 
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http://xenforo.com/community/thread...46/page-2#post-15444
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/status-update.232/#post-2336

I have been pushing this for more then 5 years to get it into vBulletin. There must be some technical reasons why no forum package offers this? The benefits seem so obvious? vBulletin Staff is also supportive of this, so maybe one day we will see it in vBulletin. I hope xenForo can be the first to actually offer it to it's customers. I would love to hear the vision of Mike&Kier about this functionality.
 
I would love to see this also... +100 from me, I guess if it was possible it would be difficult as without creating a new table column for every custom field the only other ways would be to 1 serialize all of the custom fields into an "extra: column" but extracting and spliting the data afterwards may be server intensive or, creating a new DB just for extra fields but then that would definitely cause more load as each thread would require an additional DB Query.
 
http://xenforo.com/community/thread...46/page-2#post-15444
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/status-update.232/#post-2336

I have been pushing this for more then 5 years to get it into vBulletin. There must be some technical reasons why no forum package offers this? The benefits seem so obvious? vBulletin Staff is also supportive of this, so maybe one day we will see it in vBulletin. I hope xenForo can be the first to actually offer it to it's customers. I would love to hear the vision of Mike&Kier about this functionality.

supported! :)
 
http://xenforo.com/community/thread...46/page-2#post-15444
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/status-update.232/#post-2336

I have been pushing this for more then 5 years to get it into vBulletin. There must be some technical reasons why no forum package offers this? The benefits seem so obvious? vBulletin Staff is also supportive of this, so maybe one day we will see it in vBulletin. I hope xenForo can be the first to actually offer it to it's customers. I would love to hear the vision of Mike&Kier about this functionality.

It probably just got lost in the sea of suggestions.
 
Obviously, the text itself will be stored in the DB, but if this is a custom field, I would want it to be stored in the tables as such so I can do a specific search on that field.
 
I would imagine the custom thread fields are in a database table of their own, much like custom profile fields. The difference is modifications would not be making changes to table structures (to add custom thread field functionality) and accessing these values would be backed by the API.
 
I'm not quite sure I understand what the purpose of this would be. Would it be like, in a car sale forum, adding a place for a price to show up on forumdisplay?
 
I'm not quite sure I understand what the purpose of this would be. Would it be like, in a car sale forum, adding a place for a price to show up on forumdisplay?

Basically... Yes it is the ability for the forum admin to add extra fields to the thread creation page...

On a Car Sales forum, could be the Car's Price and registration.
On a book review site, could be the books ISBN
On a Application Download site, could be the download link

This way you can customize the display of it in a way that is consistant on every thread instead of requiring the user to enter it all the time..

For example on the book suggestion from the ISBN you as the admin could then pull all of the details of the book based on the ISBN and display them.
 
It's not quite as simple as custom profile fields. With custom profile fields, the fields are the same for all members. With custom thread fields, you probably want the ability to have different custom thread fields per forum. If that is the case, then you need to consider what happens to the custom thread fields when you copy or move a thread from forum X to forum Y. Certainly not impossible to deal with, but not as easy as custom profile fields.
 
It's not quite as simple as custom profile fields. With custom profile fields, the fields are the same for all members. With custom thread fields, you probably want the ability to have different custom thread fields per forum. If that is the case, then you need to consider what happens to the custom thread fields when you copy or move a thread from forum X to forum Y. Certainly not impossible to deal with, but not as easy as custom profile fields.

Such a thing is more trivial than you are making it out to be.
 
If that is the case, then you need to consider what happens to the custom thread fields when you copy or move a thread from forum X to forum Y.
Same as when you cast a double to float: you lose precision. :)

So, If you move a thread from forum X which contains P, Q, R custom fields, to the forum Y which contains P, Q, S custom fields... the R field would get truncated, and S would be filled with it's default value (if it has one defined).

And if S is a required field with no default value, then moving the thread could be a 2-step process, with the user being given a chance to fill that required field in step 2.
 
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