Vqmod For Blesta Now Available

[Tcalp]

Hi Everyone,

 

I've just picked up a copy of Blesta yesterday and though it would be great to make vQmod available for everyone.  I haven't tested in depth at this time but it should be working to be able to conduct code alterations in any of the code, keep in mind that I haven't gone through much of the core code to tell for sure, but at this time I'm basically assuming that most contructs are mostly included/required within the '/lib' area.

 

What is vQmod?

"vQmod™" (aka Virtual Quick Mod) is an override system designed to avoid having to change core files. The concept is quite simple... Instead of making changes to the core files directly, the changes are created as xml search/replace script files. These script files are parsed during page load as each "source" core file is loaded with the "include" or "require" php functions. The source is then patched with the script file changes, and saved to a temp file. That temp file is then substituted for the original during execution. The original source file is never altered. This results in a "virtual" change to the core during execution without any actual modification to the core files.  Learn more at www.vqmod.com

 

What Makes vQmod Useful?

If you have any development experience with just about any platform, when attempting to 'make it your own', or write custom software plug-ins you'll almost always have the desire to make code changes outside of the templating system or what the original developer designed a plug-in system to be capable of.  vQmod allows you to make such code changes and equally distrobute them in extensions you create, and equally keep code alterations separate for easier upgrading / patching of core files in the future.

 

How To Install

Copy the 'vqmod' folder to the root of your blesta installation, ensure that the main index.php has write permission and run www.yourdomain.com/vqmod/install. (adjust run path as needed).

 

 

If anyone has any feedback/questions, please post a reply here and I'll do my best to answer...

vqmod-2.4.1-blesta.zip

[Evaske]

Quite interested in testing this out actually as I have made quite a few changes to some core files to fully customise the look of Blesta. Does it have much impact on page load times? 

[Tcalp]

It has built-in caching, near zero effect on load time, even with 80+ mods / ~1.4MB of XML mod instruction (largest I've seen).  Mind you if the cache is cleared or requires refresh, it can take a small wink to get the cache re-built.

[Evaske]

Excellent. I'll have a go with it tonight and see if I can get it working Will be very helpful as I currently just have a document noting all the changes I've made to various files. 

[flangefrog]

Bugfix to enable Blesta to work in PHP CLI mode (i.e. to enable cron jobs to run)

 

vqmod/install/index.php

Change line 65 from

require_once(\'./vqmod/vqmod.php\');

to

require_once(dirname(__FILE__) . \'/vqmod/vqmod.php\');

vqmod-2.4.1-blesta.zip

[interfasys]

I don't see the advantage versus generating patches. Patches are simple to generate against an original directory and easy to share.

Both the vqmod and patches will have to be updated with each version of Blesta.

What am I missing?

[flangefrog]

I don't see the advantage versus generating patches. Patches are simple to generate against an original directory and easy to share.

Both the vqmod and patches will have to be updated with each version of Blesta.

What am I missing?

 

A well made vQmod won't usually have to be updated unless there has been a big change to the code. It's also possible to use several vQmods that modify one file.

[interfasys]

I've just read more about it at:

https://code.google.com/p/vqmod/

 

and I can see the value when testing different modifications or when chaining patches. 

Seems useful for people used to writing vqmods

[wfitg]

This looks great.

 

the only thing that I do not like is having to set some file permissions 777

[flangefrog]

Reposting my answer from another thread for the benefit of those reading this thread:
 

You don't need 777 permissions. If Blesta already runs fine and you can upload files to it then you probably won't need to change anything. Depending on your server configuration file permissions of 644 or even 640 will be enough.

[wfitg]

Hi FF

The OP says "ensure that the main index.php has write permission"

Why is that needed?

And what server configs are necessary?

I want to try vQ, but I do not want the index file (or any unnecessary file) to be writable.

[flangefrog]

vQmod intercepts any included php files and does this by changing some code in index.php. This is only done when running yoursite.com/vqmod/install so after you have installed vQmod you can remove the write permissions. You will need to make vqmod/vqcache and vqmod/logs writable. No special server config should be neccesary, if php files can already run then that's enough. You may want to read https://github.com/vqmod/vqmod/wiki for some more info.

[AllanD]

vQmod is my new best friend.  Very slick updating functionality without directly editing core files.

[Tcalp]

Glad to see this has gotten use (had just gotten a thumbs up on WHT regarding it).

 

I didn't realise at the time but vQmod 2.4.1 has a 'semi broken' cache engine in that it takes more time for cached renders then it should.  If there is demand I'm happy to update to 2.5.x release.

[AllanD]

If a 2.5.x release was available I would definitely update to that version.

[Rodrigo]

Just a heads up, I'm upgraded my blesta installation from 3.3.0 to 3.5.1, and I noted that the services tab at client/admin user dashboard view disappeared.

 

By checking the network section of google chrome developer tools, I found that it was an error with loading a vendor class "PricingsFactory".

 

Class 'PricingFactory' not found on line 3405 in/[..blestadir..]/public_html/app/models/invoices.php

 

I tried putting the original Blesta 3.5.1 index.php into the installation and it worked fine. When I tried to use the Vqmod installer the problem came back.

 

So there is a problem with the Vqmod installer, introduced in some blesta version between 3.3.0b2 and 3.5.1.

[Kangaroo]

Excellent. I'll have a go with it tonight and see if I can get it working

[motuka]

So I have installed. What next?

 

And since am installing something, how do I uninstall?

[turner2f]

After installing the vQmod plugin...

It killed our website.

Warning: require_once(/home/pigomult/support.pigomultimedia.com/pigo_hub_cntr/vqmod/vendors/autoload.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/username/support.websitename.com/sub_folder/vqmod/vqcache/vq2-lib_init.php on line 6

Fatal error: require_once(): Failed opening required '/home/pigomult/support.pigomultimedia.com/pigo_hub_cntr/vqmod/vendors/autoload.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/username/support.websitename.com/sub_folder/vqmod/vqcache/vq2-lib_init.php on line 6

 

Even tried deleting the folder from the server, and our website was still dead.

============

Why did the plugin kill our site ?

[turner2f]

UPDATE :

Even after RE-Uploading the backup SQL file to the site it was STILL dead.

We actually had to delete everything on the server and RE-Upload the WHOLE website to get it back online .

============

Does this plugin change or add files to the site ?

Because apparently it was looking for them and could not find them.

============

Why did RE-Uploading our DB file to PHPMyAdmin NOT resolve the issue ?

============

Does this plugin work with BETA 4.0 ?

[Michael]

I dowt it, it's hasn't been updated in ages.