Aaron Mc Adam A blog about web development and UX

7Jul/100

Expression Engine Disqust Disqus API plugin

Here's another ExpressionEngine plugin I've put together. It allows you to call the Disqus API so that comments can be loaded into the page for SEO reasons. The best way is to wrap the plugin call inĀ <noscript> tags like so:

How to get the API keys you need

There are some hoops to jump through in order to get the API keys needed. I recommend using the RESTClient Firefox extension for returning the JSON.

Here are the steps:

  1. Log in to Disqus.com. Visit http://disqus.com/api/get_my_key/ from within the browser to get your User API key from the session.
  2. Call http://disqus.com/api/get_forum_list/?user_api_key=User API key from RESTClient or similar to return the list of forums. Look for the id key alongside the name of the forum you want. This is the Forum ID key.
  3. Finally, call http://disqus.com/api/get_forum_api_key/?user_api_key=User API key&forum_id=Forum ID key. The returning JSON will contain the Forum API key that's unique to the supplied Forum.

You also need to make sure to supply a base url for your site so that the plugin can look up the ID of a given thread.

And finally...

The plugin does need some work on making it easier to pass in parameters, like the Twitter OAuth one. I'll get round to it eventually!

The source is hosted on GitHub.

5Jul/1013

Expression Engine Twitter Timeline Plugin with OAuth

UPDATE: The official Expression Engine Twitter Timeline plugin has been updated for OAuth: http://expressionengine.com/blog/entry/twitter_timeline_plugin_and_noauth/

For a recent project I had to add OAuth to the Twitter Timeline plugin for Expression Engine in line with the upcoming removal of support for Basic authentication. The plugin still needs some work to make it more customisable from the template side.

The plugin allows for automatic parsing of links, usernames and hashtags.

Example:

The major OAuth and Twitter API heavy lifting is done by Abraham Williams' excellent twitteroauth library.

It's hosted on GitHub so feel free to fork it: http://github.com/aaronmcadam/EE-OAuth-Twitter-Timeline-Plugin