[fixed] Missing topic watch notifications

As I've reported before I don't get email notifications from here (or from DF) since ForumsPlus was adopted.

Recently installed ForumsPlus as I need the functionality. Now have users who do not get Email Notifications, but do get PM notifications so it is not email related.

Dug into code. Think I have found a problem, but my attempts at a fix have failed to improve things.

If you post or reply to a topic after first commenting out line 232 of includes/pphBB/functions_posts.php (to stop the url refresh). With Admin Debug on you'll see a Notice that $results is undefined on line 409 of the same module.

$results was for a single Select in Forums which has become 2 different Selects in ForumsPlus, neither of which use $results.

It appears to me the result of this undefined, is that a large swath of the email notification code never gets executed.

Hopefully this is enough to enable you to recreate.

I'm happy to take part in any testing you'd like to do on here, or give me pointers and I'll test on my new site.

TIA!

Initiated by Bugger (Original Entry) - Comments Here Please.

The DForg website does not have ForumsPlus installed.

I do get notifications from ForumsPlus on this site.

The only thing common to both sites is yourself which suggests there is some problem related to your own email address.

However, as I've posted elsewhere before, if you don't click the notification link from the watch email that is sent out, it will not send further notifications - rightly or wrongly, this is how watch has always worked, so it is working as designed.

Nonetheless, I'll look into it, after you fix your email address problems.

Phoenix, Please give me some credit I spent 5 hours walking through the code until I found that undefined. I didn't do that on a whim.

FWIW, there is nothing wrong with my email address, not only do I get email notifications from other dragonfly sites, including ones with ForumsPlus installed, I also get PM notifications from this site!

And responding to email notifications to get subsequent ones, is - of course - only possible if you get the first one. Which has not happened in any of the cases that I'm referencing.

The 2 cases I'm debugging on my new site do not involve my email address. In both cases the originator does not get email notifications, even if they post subsequent replies, but other posters do. And 1 OP is a responder to the other thread and he gets email notifications from that one. I'm a responder on both threads (same email address as here) and I get notifications. All get PM notifications.

So I believe the problem is incomplete selection of candidates for email notifications, not inability to send emails per se. I.e the actual email address of each user is not pertinent.

I haven't yet fully understood what the code is trying to do in this area, but comparing the ForumsPlus includes/pphBB/functions_posts.php with that of Forums, you have taken 1 SELECT of users and broken into 2: 1 for forum watch and 1 for topic watch. Both SELECT's use something other than $result but line 409 is if ($row = $db->sql_fetchrow($result)) { # Sixty second limit set_time_limit(0); # Keep track of which users are notified so we do not notify them in the forum notify while($row_user_info = $db->sql_fetchrow($result_user_info, SQL_ASSOC)) { if ('' != $row_user_info['user_email']) {
but there is no $result defined at this point in function user_notifications. This can't be good

I guessed at $result_user_info, but that alone did not seem to fix things, in fact nobody got email notifications If $result is undefined - as reported by PHP during execution of Post Reply - then this block of code is possibly uncharted waters. And the code does appear to be related to some users not getting email notifications. But I'm out of my depth

Surely that's worthy of a look, please?

Fix up your email problem first - it's a fact that your email address bounces at dforg - here, I don't even bother collecting bounces.

You've had this problem here and at dforg for a long time.

So I've changed to an email address at a different domain name, even though the old one is in current use.

So would you please tell me the outgoing validator you use here and at DF so that I can clear my domain please? I can't think why else it would "bounce."

EDIT: Hang on, the Confirm Username/Email change for layingback came to me at the old email address that you said bounced. I don't understand?
(Just as well though, else Change Email wouldn't be possible.)

As I said, I don't bother checking bounces, therefore I have no idea if you bounce here. However, your address is definitely bouncing at dforg.

As for why forum notifications are being rejected there, I can only speculate that your spam filter doesn't like it.

It seems you haven't confirmed your new email address, so your old one is still in use here.

I have confirmed. I've done it 3 times, with and without javascript enabled. And I've started over 3 times.

If I click the link not logged in, I get a login screen, then dropped into My Account, with email still the same.

If I click the link when logged in I get:
There is no user in the database with this information.
You can register a new user from here.

Don't know what else to try ...

FWIW my spam filter is set to forward regardless - the Confirm emails are marked as spam and reaching me - and if it was spam related it'd not bounce at DF.

hmm, I'll have to check if Accounts has some issue under v10.

All I know is that dforg forum notifications are returned:From: Mail Delivery System <Mailer-Daemon@secure.cpgnuke.com> Date: Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 6:42 PM Subject: Mail delivery failed: returning message to sender To: nobody @ secure.cpgnuke.com This message was created automatically by mail delivery software. A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed: LB's email retry time not reached for any host after a long failure period

That being a fact, I am not yet prepared to chase issues when there is an issue with your email, and maybe the same issue with your users.

Thanks for info - but PLEASE edit out my email address. It (has) been free of true spam to date, even though I've used for many for years!

Edited - now you know it's real.

And the site I'm talking about is not layingback.net, nor is it even hosted at same host or country for that matter. It's pentaxslr.eu and it's not me not getting the emails (I get them fine).

I have an unexplained issue with my email address or server, but that's not related to an undefine in ForumsPlus in any direct way. I've unchecked Receive Notification on Replies so as not to pose problems for your emailer.

I've always tried to feed back what I think are problems in code, which is all I'm trying to do here. If it's a false positive, then I'm sorry, just tell me. This is no more than I'd hope from users of my code.

Look, there is a problem with your email - you are not even receiving notifications from standard Forums at DForg.

Once we establish just why you aren't receiving legitimate notifications, and it seems that everyone else does, I will spend the necessary hours to track down possible issues in ForumsPlus.

I like to eliminate known unknowns before chasing unknown unknowns.

Well, I just went through the change email process on this site, and it worked fine, several times.

If anything, I'll probably change the re-direct which might be confusing you.

Currently, it re-directs back to the change email page, but displays the changed email so you know it worked.

OK, I give up! You "win."

"There is no user in the database with this information.
You can register a new user from here."
does not appear to be a redirect of any sort.
I'll PM you a copy of the email and link.
And the confirm is going to my old email address not the new one - which if correct means I guess that you can only change email address from one which is already working?

But back to the bug that I have identified. If I was raising an issue that emails are not being sent I'd perfectly understand your response.

But I'm raising a PHP runtime error reported by DF where you run a SELECT and test against an undefined $result. Line numbers and everything. It happens to relate to code which handles email notifications, but the undefined occurs long before any emails are sent

It appears that the only way I can get you to look at this bug is to prove that it doesn't exist. I don't know how to do that. Except lie and say that I am seeing emails from here - but I'll not do that!

So I guess I'll just have to go through an uninstall ... and let someone else raise this bug later.

Do as you wish - I'm sick of rushing into problems reported by users where there is conflicting, and invariably inadequate, information, so I work at clearing away the mixed info before looking for what's left.

Funnily enough, 95% of the time I find that what's left is nothing. That's my methodology across several different cms systems and it works pretty well. I'm not sorry if that's not good enough for you.

Edit: After installing and setting up a v9 site, I've found the issue (the rare 5%) - I'll fix it later.