Herding Cats
with the
BuddyPress
Activity
Component

Boone B Gorges · @boone

WordCamp Europe 2013

Boone

• is a Lead Developer for BuddyPress
• lives in New York City
• is a freelance consultant and developer
• never uses fewer than four bullet points

•  
  Activity Streams
•  
  Blog Tracking
•  
  Friendships
•  
  Groups
•  
  Private Messaging
•  
  User Profiles

Out of the box

Half Twitter

Half aggregator

Why aggregate?

• Posts
• Comments
• New memberships
• Events
• Groups
• Friendships
• Form submissions
• Blog posts from other sites
• Tweets
• Your mom

Why aggregate?

• Posts
  wp_posts
• Comments
  wp_comments
• New memberships
  wp_users
• Events
  wp_posts (CPT)
• Groups
  wp_bp_groups
• Friendships
  wp_bp_friends
• Form submissions
  wp_rg_lead
• Blog posts from other sites
  http://teleogistic.net/feed
• Tweets
  GET https://api.twitter.com/1.1/statuses/
user_timeline.json?screen_name=boone&count=20
• Your mom
  GET https://api.yourmom.com/1.0/
wceu-attendees-moms?fields=phone

Now go fetch

Show me all of Boone's activity

$sql = "SELECT {$all_the_things} 
        FROM {$all_the_places} 
	WHERE {$the_user_index} = {$boones_user_id}
	ORDER BY {$omg_wtf} DESC;"
					

Halp

bp-activity provides:

1. a flexible schema for storing arbitrary activity data
2. API functions for creating, retrieving, updating, and deleting activity items
3. Template loops and template files for displaying activity content

Schema

mysql > DESCRIBE wp_bp_activity;

        id                | bigint(20)
        user_id           | bigint(20)
        component         | varchar(75)
        type              | varchar(75)
        action            | text      
        content           | longtext 
        primary_link      | varchar(255)
        item_id           | bigint(20) 
        secondary_item_id | bigint(20)
        date_recorded     | datetime 
        hide_sitewide     | tinyint(1)
        mptt_left         | int(11)  
        mptt_right        | int(11) 
        is_spam           | tinyint(1)
					

user_id

is the user id

content

is the content

action

is an HTML string of the form "Boone posted a new comment on the post 'Foo'"

component

and

type

are non-localized strings that allow categorization and sorting

component (eg 'groups') is more general than type (eg 'joined_group'

item_id

and

secondary_item_id

are integer values representing relationships with arbitrary items

Example: Group creation

• user_id
  2 (Boone's user id)
• action
  '<a href="http://example.com/members/boone/" title="Boone Gorges">Boone Gorges</a> created the group <a href="http://example.com/groups/smurfs/">Smurfs</a>'
• content
  ''
• component
  'groups'
• type
  'created_group'
• item_id
  31 (the id of the Smurfs group)
• secondary_item_id
  0

Example: Blog post

• user_id
  2 (Boone's user id)
• action
  <a href="http://example.com/members/admin/" title="Boone Gorges">Boone Gorges</a> wrote a new post, [...]'
• content
  'This weekend, I am attending WordCamp Europe. It is the bomb. [...]'
• component
  'blogs'
• type
  'new_blog_post'
• item_id
  6 (the id of the Foo 6 site)
• secondary_item_id
  13 (the id of the post)

The API

Create new activity

$activity_id = bp_activity_add( array(
	'action' => 'Boone wrote a new Twilight
	             fanfic, Vampire Luv',	
	'component' => 'fanfic',
	'type' => 'new_fanfic',
	'primary_link' => 'http://example.com/fanfic/vampire-luv',
	'user_id' => $user_id,
	'item_id' => $item_id, // The numeric id of the fanfic object
) );
					

Pass an 'id' to update an existing item.

Delete existing activity

// Know the id?
$deleted = bp_activity_delete( array( 'id' => $activity_id, ) );

// Otherwise provide some specifics, and let BP find it
$deleted = bp_activity_delete( array(
	'component' => 'fanfic',
	'type' => 'new_fanfic',
	'user_id' => $user_id,
	'item_id' => $item_id, // The numeric id of the fanfic object
) );
					

Fetch activity

// By user id
$activities = bp_activity_get( array(
	'page' => 1,
	'per_page' => 5,
	'filter' => array(
            'user_id' => $user_id,
	),
) );

// By type and item_id
$activities = bp_activity_get( array(
	// ...
	'filter' => array(
	    'action' => 'new_fanfic',
	    'primary_id' => $fanfic_item_id,
	),
) );
					

Drilling down with bp_activity_get()

• meta_query
• exclude
• in
• filter: user_id
• filter: object
• filter: action
• filter: primary_id
• filter: secondary_id

Getting Creative

wordpress.org profiles

Mert Yazıcıoğlu, GSoC 2013

wordpress.org: Data, data everywhere

• Core commits, core props
      core.trac.wordpress.org (Trac)
• Plugin/theme commits
      [plugins|themes].trac.wordpress.org (Trac)
• make.wordpress.org posts/comments
      make.wordpress.org (WordPress)
• Support forum topics/responses
      wordpress.org/support (bbPress 1.x)
• New plugin/theme registration
      wordpress.org/[plugins|themes] (bbPress 1.x)

wordpress.org: Herd those cats

1. Plugins for Trac, bbPress, and WordPress that catch new activity and send a POST request to a WP API
2. WordPress plugin that takes API requests and uses bp_activity_add()

   
   $user = get_user_by('login', $_POST['user']);
   
   if ( $_POST['newTopic'] ) {
   	$action = 'Created a new topic in Support Forums';
   	$content = $_POST['title'];
   	$type = 'new_topic';
   } else {
   	$action = 'Posted a reply to ' . $_POST['title'] . ' in Support Forums';
   	$content = $_POST['message'];
   	$type = 'new_post';
   }
   
   $args = array(
   	'user_id'           => $user->ID,
   	'action'            => $action,
   	'content'           => $content,
   	'primary_link'      => $_POST['url'],
   	'component'         => 'dotorg_activities',
   	'type'              => $type,
   	'item_id'           => $user->ID,
   	'secondary_item_id' => $_POST['topic'],
   	'hide_sitewide'     => false
   );
   
   bp_activity_add( $args );
   							

http://gsoc.svn.wordpress.org/2013/merty/

Resources

http://codex.buddypress.org/developer/function-examples/bp_activity_add/

http://codex.buddypress.org/developer/loops-reference/the-activity-stream-loop/

Thanks!

Boone B Gorges · @boone