Skip to content
View in the app

A better way to browse. Learn more.

ernestdefoe.online

A full-screen app on your home screen with push notifications, badges and more.

To install this app on iOS and iPadOS
  1. Tap the Share icon in Safari
  2. Scroll the menu and tap Add to Home Screen.
  3. Tap Add in the top-right corner.
To install this app on Android
  1. Tap the 3-dot menu (⋮) in the top-right corner of the browser.
  2. Tap Add to Home screen or Install app.
  3. Confirm by tapping Install.
ernestdefoe.online

Extensions, themes & support for Flarum and Invision Community

Vibe coding for the community web. Report a bug, request a feature, or dig into the source — this is where the tools you use get built, in the open.

We do custom Bespoke Invision Community apps. If you have an idea for something you want then use the contact form to get in touch with us.
Knowledge base

Things that cost me a day, so they cost you none

Working notes from building Invision Community and Flarum applications. Mostly the failures that give no error at all — the ones where everything installs cleanly and quietly does the wrong thing.

92 articles

Invision Community 5

86 articles

Extensions and contracts

39

What each extension point is for, what it must declare, and what happens when it is wrong — which is usually nothing visible.

Languages and text

5

The string table, translation, and the places where text does not appear where you expected it to.

Theming, templates and forms

9

Theme hooks, CSS that survives both colour schemes, and building forms that do not throw on render.

Background work and scheduled tasks

5

The queue system, work that has to happen after the response, and jobs that finish without doing anything.

Data, settings and storage

11

The database layer, settings, tags, file storage, and backing up a live site.

AI features and expectations

5

What these features do, what they cost, and what buyers reasonably but wrongly assume they do.

Application structure and releases

11

The JSON files an application is made of, versioning and upgrade steps, and testing from the command line.

Realtime, chat and calls

1

WebSocket gateways, relays and the server-side pieces live features depend on — where "it works when I test it" and "it works for your members" are different claims.

Nothing matches that.

A content listener without $class takes down your whole community

A content listener must declare public static string $class, matching the extends value in your application's data/listeners.json. Omit it and the front page of the entire community returns a 500 — not just your application's pages.

class Topic extends ContentListenerType
{
    public static string $class = 'IPS\forums\Topic';   // REQUIRED
}

Why it is fatal rather than local

ListenerType::getExtendedClass() reads that typed static with no isset() guard, and Event::loadListeners() walks every registered listener on any page that fires an event. One listener missing the property throws "Typed static property must not be accessed before initialization" for every visitor.

Two things that will send you looking in the wrong place

  • Disabling the application does not help. Listeners are registered from data/listeners.json regardless of app_enabled. Toggling your app off to bisect the problem tells you, convincingly and wrongly, that your app is innocent.
  • The stack trace names the wrong application. The fatal surfaces inside whichever app owns the front page — commonly cms/modules/front/pages/page.php — and never mentions the listener at fault. You will spend time on CMS default pages and permissions that are all fine.

Not every listener needs it

Check $requiresClassDeclaration before assuming. IPS's own listeners in cms, blog, gallery, nexus and downloads set it FALSE and derive the class another way, so a checker that flags them is wrong — that is worth knowing before you "fix" core.

Checking every application at once

foreach ( new DirectoryIterator( \IPS\ROOT_PATH . '/applications' ) as $dir )
{
    $file = $dir->getPathname() . '/data/listeners.json';
    if ( !file_exists( $file ) ) { continue; }

    foreach ( json_decode( file_get_contents( $file ), TRUE ) as $key => $definition )
    {
        $reflect = new ReflectionClass( $definition['classname'] );
        $property = $reflect->getProperty( 'class' );

        // isInitialized(), not getValue() - reading an uninitialised typed
        // static is the very Error you are testing for
        if ( !$property->isInitialized() ) { echo "broken: {$key}\n"; }
    }
}

User Feedback

Recommended Comments

There are no comments to display.

Account

Navigation

Search

Search

Configure browser push notifications

Chrome (Android)
  1. Tap the lock icon next to the address bar.
  2. Tap Permissions → Notifications.
  3. Adjust your preference.
Chrome (Desktop)
  1. Click the padlock icon in the address bar.
  2. Select Site settings.
  3. Find Notifications and adjust your preference.