There is constant interest in my last post about phpBB support. Seeing that phpBB2 is getting a bit old and phpBB3 the way to go I decided to have another stab at phpBB3 integration.

Rather than write just some straight SQL I’ve played a bit with using phpBB code directly from a plugin. Had I seen earlier that phpBB3 also uses a global $db (same as Zen Cart) it might have saved some valuable time :/

Anyhow, I am happy to announce that some critical progress has been made and a solution is within reach. There is working validation code (email address, nickname) and yesterday I managed to get the create account code to work.

The trickiest bit was actually to get the password hash to work. Since the phpBB code needs database access (no, no, $db!) I had to find another way.

Luckily, the hash code in phpBB is based on phpass without any major modifications. So, I’ve added phpass to core (just the one class PasswordHash) and added a generic new authentication provider using it.

The new phpBB3 plugin will have its own implementation,. though, as it needs to generate hashes with a different identifier. Yay!

Next on my list are updates and logoff. In the long run there might also be code to handle session timeouts and auto login to phpBB, but I haven’t done any research on that yet.

So far, like most integration mods/plugins, this is one way only (from ZenMagick to phpBB). If anyone could point me to a phpBB mod that tracks user actions (registration/modification/logoff) that I could use to implement the reverse (profile changes in phpBB) that would be great.