Roster Master for Dragonfly

EverQuest II Guild Roster Manager for Dragonfly CMS

About RM4DF

Roster Master for Dragonfly (RM4DF) provides a method to integrate the Sony EverQuest II Guild Roster into your Dragonfly CMS site. Fully integrated into the site, you can manage and view your guild's data right from your portal. A block is also provided that displays guild statistical data similar to that found on the guild summary page on the everquest2.com website.

Roster Master for Dragonfly is part of the Roster Master Project, which is composed of a family of ports of the original Roster Master module originally written by Rex "SaintPeter" Schrader. Significant enhancements and exclusive features have been made for the Dragonfly CMS version, as well as to accomodate changes in Everquest II and the everquest2.com site.

The Roster Master development thread on everquest2.com is a highly active and community supported discussion focusing on debugging and introducing new features and ideas into the Roster Master project. Other Roster Master ports and related resources can be found on the www.rostermaster.org site.

General Features

Roster Master: Guild Roster Manager

Allow your CMS users to "Claim" his or her characters

Character "Type" Tracking

Compliments and expands upon the "Guild Rank" feature

Users may specify if their character is Primary, Secondary, or Utility

Option to list Primary characters only

Guild Roster Single and Double Column Sorting

Sort by clicking on a column header, or select two columns from a drop-down (i.e. Class, then Level)

Reversible Sorting for both sort modes

Optional column sort indicators displayed in table headings

Optional Grouped Listing

Quest Master: Quest Tracker and Query (Dragonfly Port Exclusive!)

Track Heritage, Access, and Timeline Quest progress for your claimed characters

Links quests and rewards to online walkthroughs and data

Query quests to list characters at each quest step

Features an exclusive scrolling/resizable JavaScript Table

The table can be resized by dragging the horizontal rule between the bottom of the table and the table footer up and down

Signature Master: Dynamic Signature Generator (Dragonfly Port Exclusive!)

Dynamically create graphical signature blocks automatically from information stored in the roster database

Features a unique caching system to reduce wasted server resources and poor client performance issues

Automatic Instantiation (Dragonfly Port Exclusive!)

Multiple instances of this module can be created by making a copy of the module directory and adding an underscore followed by an integer to the name of the directory (e.g. "Roster_Master_2"). The module will detect this and automagically configure itself

Blocks follow the same pattern

Guild Wall of Fame Block (Dragonfly Port Exclusive!)

Display guild statistics and information in your Dragonfly CMS blocks

Many display configuration options

Guild Summary Information (Dragonfly Port Exclusive!)

Guild Level displayed in Roster

Statistics and other information available in block

SQL Backend Cache

Fast display since you don't have to hit Sony's site every time

Configurable cache refresh time

Update Logging

Have a record of changes in all fields, every user add, and every user deletion

Log data update failures and retries

Configurable, log as much or as little as you wish

Error Messages

Explanatory error messages for common failures

Clean exits

Fully Documented, Clean Code

All functions completely commented

Advanced users have access to more advanced options and configuration within the code source

Open-source, released under the GNU General Public License

Completely Dragonfly Compliant:

Roster Master has been ported to Dragonfly with an expanded feature set
Easy to Setup and Install
- FTP, configure, set permissions and go
- No .sql file to import, just run the installer
- Install, backup, uninstall, and upgrade right from the Dragonfly control panel
CMS Username to Character Name Mapping
Includes Dragonfly's localization support (English and French language files included)
Leverages the CMS' features and security

Download

Roster Master for Dragonfly is available free of charge from the Clenched Fist Guild download site, as well as from the Dragonfly CMS community site:

Download from Clenched Fist
Download from Dragonfly CMS community site

Current released version is: Roster Master for Dragonfly 8.2.0 (2012-03-18)

Redirected guild and character detail links to the brand-new EQU site. Grats Dethdlr and Feldon, well done!
Added files to modules/Roster_Master/contrib/GEM to address inteface issues with GEM.
Added mod_expires directive to .htacces files in static image directories to request clients cache for 60 days. Requires that the Apache mod_expires module be active.
Added cURL support to allow Content-Encoding compression methods to operate if available. Using cURL for this purpose allows the server to benefit considerably from compression on the XML requests. The feature Falls back automagically to the previously used internal fsockopen() method if cURL isn't available.
Fixed templating for characters that don't have data in the Character collection.
Fixed missing Soulfire Timeline Quest icon.
Fixed missing language definition for _CONFRESET dialog.
Added new interface icons.
Fixed many broken image links.
Added (rudimentary) alts display to roster.
Fixed language file collisions that conflict with other modules.

Previous version is: Roster Master for Dragonfly 8.1.0 (2012-02-01)

Redid DoV Heritage Quest icons to reflect item types better.
Added modules/Roster_Master/contrib/rn2a/includes/api/rmdfly.php file to address inteface issues with Raid Ninja.
Reworked the upgrade to v8.0.0 to resolve installer issue. Rebuilding the roster_master table (a known issue in 8.0.0-8.0.1) should no longer be necessary.
Fixed error introduced by changes to sync_active_claims() function.
Added modules/Roster_Master/contrib/history.sql file to build your own This Day in History table with EverQuest, EverQuest II, and a few other relevant dates. Please use care with the .sql file, as it includes a table drop statement, it will erase your existing history table.
Added more robust function checks in the diagnostics page.
Changed guild name search string filtering and made it explicit the Guild ID search can use regular expression syntax. Thanks to eqHunter for reporting it.
Implemented parser changes from the 1/31/2012 API changes.

Requirements

An operational Dragonfly CMS 9.0.6.1 (or later) installation.
Don't use Dragonfly? (Why not?) You may wish to investigate RM4DF's sister ports in the Roster Master Project.
The server on which Dragonfly is installed must have outbound Web (TCP Port 80) access.
Your Guild ID number. It can be found in the guild URL (i.e. http://everquest2.com/guild/1013203/).
The Signature Master feature requires GD 2.0.1 or later and the FreeType library. It is highly recommended that Dragonfly be configured with the LEO (Link Engine Optimization) feature turned on in order for proper cache performance to be realized.

In addition, it is useful to have a working knowledge of a good FTP program as well as a basic understanding on how to edit a PHP file in order to change the configuration options.

NOTE1: This module requires outbound HTTP connectivity to the everquest2.com Website on TCP Port 80. Make sure your server can connect outbound, or the module will be unable to function (characterized by "FATAL: Gave up trying to contact the guild summary page." and "FATAL Gave up trying to contact the roster page." messages in the logfile). Fedora Core users (possibly others) will need to edit the /etc/selinux/targeted/booleans.local file and add "httpd_can_network_connect=1" (without the quotes). Other systems may need similiar changes. Read the httpd_selinux(8) man page for more information on this if your system uses this feature.

Installation

The most up-to-date installation instructions are always included in the distribution release in the INSTALL.txt file. Be sure to read the INSTALL.txt file before proceeding with installation or before requesting support! Additional notes and comments on new features and changes also appear in the CHANGELOG.txt file.

Angela "Seagoat" Taylor has developed an excellent and detailed guide to using Signature Master and its advanced features.

NOTE2: Do not use Dreamweaver to edit the Roster Master or Dragonfly PHP files, there are known issues with Dreamweaver that can cause file corruption and complicate troubleshooting. Use a plain-text editor (such as Notepad or WordPad), or a programming editor, such as jEdit.

NOTE3: The Guild Wall of Fame block stores a copy of its output in the "content" field of the "{prefix}_blocks" table, and pulls from there rather than re-run all the queries (until the block needs to be updated). This works perfectly well until the stored block exceeds the TEXT field type it's stored in which has a maximum length of 65,535 (2^16 - 1) characters. This condition would pretty much only exists if $config['breakdown_shownames'] = 1, since the block stays a constant length that's within the limits of the TEXT field. Also, people with very small guilds, can possibly duck under the limit, even with it enabled. To work around this, the Roster Master installer will change the field type of the table from TEXT to MEDIUMTEXT. This should have no impact on the operation of the Dragonfly CMS core, or to database efficiency. However, please note that if you subsequently upgrade the Dragonfly CMS core, there is a good chance that the CMS installer will revert the field type back to TEXT, in which case it would have to be remedied once again by hand (using whatever SQL management interface that you are comfortable with).

NOTE4: To parse XML with PHP, you must configure PHP with the --with-xml argument prior to make and make install. If you compile PHP as a module for Apache 1.3.9 or later, PHP will automatically use the bundled expat library from Apache.

The relevant command is (make appropriate substitutions):
ALTER TABLE {prefix}_blocks CHANGE content content MEDIUMTEXT

If you need to disable this caching behavior in the block (useful for testing), set the $DEBUG variable in the block-Guild_Wall_of_Fame.php file to TRUE.

Support

If you have problems with Roster Master for Dragonfly, please first read the article "How to Ask Questions the Smart Way" by Rick Moen and Eric Steven Raymond. Once you have identifies the issue and framed your question, then choose your best path of support.

If you believe that your problem lies with Roster Master for Dragonfly, you best method of support is the Roster Master Development Thread (archive prior to February 05, 2007, is located here). This is also the best place to inquire about ports of Roster Master that are not for Dragonfly CMS. As an alternative, you may contact the author directly regarding questions or comments for Roster Master for Dragonfly. The author of Roster Master for Dragonfly cannot assist with ports for other content management systems.

If you have a general Dragonfly CMS question, or believe you have discovered a problem with Dragonfly, your best support option is the official Dragonfly CMS site

Copyright and Distribution Permissions

This software is licensed under the CC-GNU GPL.

Roster Master for Dragonfly logo created by Ronja.
EverQuest is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.