Small Installation Guide

IPBWI is a powerful opensource and free API which allows you to develop own applications for your website connected to Invision Power Board. IPBWI is easy to use and you do not need any MySQL-knowledge to use it, but basic PHP skills are required if you want to fully benefit from the possibilites of IPBWI. However, IPBWI is a great way to learn PHP from the beginning, because it provides many coding examples which help to develop first own applications with basic PHP.

If you do not want to get closer with PHP or need any feature or implementation immediately, you should check the paid services which are provided from the project leader of IPBWI. Basic installation of IPBWI including working live examples is offered for just 15 EUR. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you want to receive an offer for your service request.

Downloading

Download the latest package of IPBWI from the official Download-Page and unzip it with any packaging-program. I prefer Total Commander for doing this, because this file manager includes also a FTP-program.

After downloading and unzipping the package, you’ll see the following file structure:

ipbwi_v2\nightlybuild\ipbwi.com\examples\
ipbwi_v2\nightlybuild\ipbwi.com\ipbwi\
ipbwi_v2\nightlybuild\ipbwi.com\index.php

Uploading

Now you should upload at least the following directory to your server via FTP:

ipbwi_v2\nightlybuild\ipbwi.com\ipbwi\

Example: If you have a website on your server, located on /websitedirectory/ and the board installation located in /websitedirectory/boarddirectory/ you should upload the directory ipbwi to /websitedirectory/. If you want to use the live-examples on your webserver, you also should upload directory examples/ and file index.php.

After uploading the whole package, you’ll see the following file structure:

/websitedirectory/examples/
/websitedirectory/ipbwi/
/websitedirectory/index.php

Configuring

You should start with editing the following file in a text-editor like notepad++:

ipbwi_v2\nightlybuild\ipbwi.com\ipbwi\config.inc.php

There are different options for IPBWI which could be set by you, but there are two settings which are important to run IPBWI and have to be set.

define(’ipbwi_BOARD_PATH’,”);
define(’ipbwi_ROOT_PATH’,”)

You need to set the root path to these directories. Try using

<?php
echo $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'];
?>

in a test.php file which is uploaded to each, board and ipbwi ones, directory. Open your browser and visit both files. There should the path you need printed. Copy&Paste them to the config-vars.

Example:

define(’ipbwi_BOARD_PATH’,'/home/public_html/websitedirectory/boarddirectory/’);
define(’ipbwi_ROOT_PATH’,'/home/public_html/websitedirectory/ipbwi/’)

If you want to get the live examples worked properly, please also set the following setting:

define(’ipbwi_WEB_URL’,”)

Example:

define(’ipbwi_WEB_URL’,'http://website.com/’)

Save and upload this file now.

Please read the detailed informations in the config.inc.php which give you further instructions about all settings.

Knowledge

You are now able to reach the live examples on your webserver. Open your browser and type in the URL you previous defined in config var ipbwi_WEB_URL.
It’s very easy to develop own applications now. You are able to view the sourcecode of all live-examples in your browser by clicking on the footer-link. Each live example has a link to the manual-entry which describes the used functions, too. The manual is the best way to get informations about the possibilites of each function. You’ll see: The power of IPBWI is mostly limited by your knowledge of PHP. The more you know how to handle the provided functions, the more board integration you are able to implement.

Loading IPBWI

To use IPBWI in your PHP-files, you have to insert the following line:

Example, if the script is located in /home/public_html/websitedirectory/

<?php require_once(’ipbwi/ipbwi.inc.php’); ?>

That’s all. Now you are able to reach every function of IPBWI through object called $ipbwi.

Using IPBWI

Here is a small code-example which shows how to access an IPBWI function. I suppose you’ve already loaded IPBWI as described above.

This example shows your display name in the board:

<?php
// first check if you are logged in
if($ipbwi->member->isLoggedIn()){

// retrieve member informations
$member = $ipbwi->member->info();

// print member name
echo ‘Display Name: ‘.$member['members_display_name'];

}
?>

If you want to get all available fields of $ipbwi->member->info() viewed, you are able to view them via PHP-function print_r();
Example:

<?php print_r($ipbwi->member->info()); ?>

There are tons of live examples which show you the possibilities of IPBWI. You can copy&paste&modify the sourcecode of these examples to make own applications.

Support

If you need help, you should use the official support forum of IPBWI. Paid premium support is also available. If you found any bugs, please use the official bug tracker to report them.