Scratch

You'd need access to the user list for sure, as veggie said. It would probably be possible, although it wouldn't be self updating, since it would have to go through the whole list so collect the top posters 

veggieman001 wrote:

No I think there's a way you can sort the user list by post count

*Checks own forum*

Yes there is! This could be possible, although unlikely since the Scratch Team doesn't want post counts to be visible anymore 

jji7skyline wrote:

veggieman001 wrote:

No I think there's a way you can sort the user list by post count

*Checks own forum*

Yes there is! This could be possible, although unlikely since the Scratch Team doesn't want post counts to be visible anymore 

You can sort the user list by post count in FluxBB, and I think in PunBB.

I don't think this would be at all easy given how these forums work, if even possible.

Last edited by jvvg (2012-04-30 21:59:02)

It wouldddd it would just take forever and need passwords is nobody listening

This forum uses Flux, I do believe.

jji7skyline wrote:

veggieman001 wrote:

It wouldddd it would just take forever and need passwords is nobody listening

Asking for passwords isn't — well, it's just not right.

And yes, these forums are FluxBB.

'Course it's not right. But that doesn't mean it's not possible.

Tsk, no passwords needed for the main site 

1. veggie
2. veggie
3. veggie

Anyway, hear ye, there is actually a way to do it without the passwords of every user. However, it would put a lot of strain on the Scratch servers to update the list: there are 247139 users in this forum!

(Coding details follow)

To proceed in the caching method, the script would have to perform a search of every user's posts and count the results. This already presents a challenge since it cannot be done using a simple file_get_contents() and therefore requires knowledge of cURL. For 247139 users and 2 seconds per action (the script needs to query a different server, which takes time), I estimate 500 000 seconds.

Then we would need to sort the array, and such a big array will take at least 10 seconds. OK, neglegible.

In total, you're not going to get the job finished before 140 hours, which makes roughly 5 days and a half of non-stop running! And most scripts time out after 20 seconds. 

I have a Python script somewhere that can read PunBB/FluxBB forum pages, parses the HTML using BeautifulSoup (lovely library for this kind of thing) and checks for new posts. I'm sure it could be adapted... 

LS97 wrote:

Tsk, no passwords needed for the main site 

1. veggie
2. veggie
3. veggie

Anyway, hear ye, there is actually a way to do it without the passwords of every user. However, it would put a lot of strain on the Scratch servers to update the list: there are 247139 users in this forum!

(Coding details follow)

To proceed in the caching method, the script would have to perform a search of every user's posts and count the results. This already presents a challenge since it cannot be done using a simple file_get_contents() and therefore requires knowledge of cURL. For 247139 users and 2 seconds per action (the script needs to query a different server, which takes time), I estimate 500 000 seconds.

Then we would need to sort the array, and such a big array will take at least 10 seconds. OK, neglegible.

In total, you're not going to get the job finished before 140 hours, which makes roughly 5 days and a half of non-stop running! And most scripts time out after 20 seconds. 

And then it'll be outdated anyways. 

nathanprocks wrote:

I have seen a program that does that before. I forgot who made it. It took aaaaaagggggggeeeeesssss to get everyones usernames on it. (It had my username in it's database too  )

Sparks made it.

LS97 wrote:

Tsk, no passwords needed for the main site 

1. veggie
2. veggie
3. veggie

Anyway, hear ye, there is actually a way to do it without the passwords of every user. However, it would put a lot of strain on the Scratch servers to update the list: there are 247139 users in this forum!

(Coding details follow)

To proceed in the caching method, the script would have to perform a search of every user's posts and count the results. This already presents a challenge since it cannot be done using a simple file_get_contents() and therefore requires knowledge of cURL. For 247139 users and 2 seconds per action (the script needs to query a different server, which takes time), I estimate 500 000 seconds.

Then we would need to sort the array, and such a big array will take at least 10 seconds. OK, neglegible.

In total, you're not going to get the job finished before 140 hours, which makes roughly 5 days and a half of non-stop running! And most scripts time out after 20 seconds. 

That number would still be wrong, too, because it doesn't count deleted posts whereas the official post count does.

sparks wrote:

There is a way to do it without passwords on the current forum system, but it's slow, time consuming and the ST would have the creator's head on a silver platter cos it would be calling their site all the time. It would involve using an external program to run through every thread in all the forums, adding new users to an array or incrementing their count every time it finds a post by them. I could probably do it but won't and encourage you not to    According to the topic count on the home page of the forums, the forums would have to be accessed at least 87556 times, though probably more since it's not one-topic-per-page.

Do you think that is an easier way to do it, also from a code performance point of view, rather than searching the user and getting their post in less than 10 seconds?

LS97 wrote:

sparks wrote:

There is a way to do it without passwords on the current forum system, but it's slow, time consuming and the ST would have the creator's head on a silver platter cos it would be calling their site all the time. It would involve using an external program to run through every thread in all the forums, adding new users to an array or incrementing their count every time it finds a post by them. I could probably do it but won't and encourage you not to    According to the topic count on the home page of the forums, the forums would have to be accessed at least 87556 times, though probably more since it's not one-topic-per-page.

Do you think that is an easier way to do it, also from a code performance point of view, rather than searching the user and getting their post in less than 10 seconds?

And how do you get the post count of another user?