Pokes
On this page
The Pokes plugin brings back the classic poke: a tiny "hi, thinking of you" between friends, with no words needed. It is also the smallest complete plugin in MyMeetBook, written to be read by developers who want to make their own.
What members get
- A Poke button on a friend's profile, beside the other profile buttons. A press sends the poke and a short confirmation, You poked ….
- A notification for the friend: … poked you. A click on it opens the Pokes page.
- The Pokes page at
/pokes, also in the side menu, with a badge for pokes not seen yet. It lists the last 50 pokes received, newest first, each with Poke back. Opening the page marks them all as seen.
Members who blocked each other cannot poke each other, and nobody can poke themselves.
Settings
Admin → Plugin pages → Pokes.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Pokes a member may send per day | 20 by default. After that the member sees That is enough poking for today. |
| Only friends can be poked | On by default. The button then shows on friends' profiles only. Off lets members poke anyone they can see. |
| Keep pokes for (days) | 30 by default. Older pokes are removed. |
The same page shows the number of pokes ever sent and today's.
Clean-up
The cron job Remove old pokes runs once a day and deletes pokes older than Keep pokes for (days). When a member account is deleted, every poke to or from it goes too.
When to switch it on
Pokes suit a site where friends are close: a school, a family, a small town. On a large open site it is better left off, or with Only friends can be poked on and a low daily limit, so it never turns into a way to bother strangers.
Turning the plugin off hides the button, the page and the menu row. The pokes stay in the database until the next clean-up after it is switched on again.
For developers: the reference plugin
Pokes is short on purpose: every part a plugin usually needs appears once, in plain code, in plugins/pokes/.
plugins/pokes/
plugin.json code, name, version, author, "tier": "free"
plugin.php the class PokesPlugin
pages/index.php the admin page (settings and numbers)
views/list.php the list on /pokesWhat plugin.php shows:
| Part | Where in the code |
|---|---|
| Its own table and default settings | install(): mmb_pokes_log, then defaults() for the three settings |
| A front page for members | route('GET', '~^/pokes$~', 'pagePokes', 'member') |
| A JSON action | the api_action filter answers pokes/send |
| A button on profiles | the profile_buttons action |
| A new kind of notification | notify(..., 'poke', ...) plus the notification_text filter |
| A side-menu row with a badge | the site_menu filter |
| A live badge count | the poll_counts filter |
| A scheduled job | the cron_jobs filter adds pokes-clean |
| Tidying up after a deleted member | the user_deleted action |
| An admin page | adminMenu() and pages/index.php |
| Limits | rate_limited() for the daily limit, get() / on() for the settings |
Copy the folder, rename the code everywhere (pokes → yourcode, table mmb_yourcode_…), and you have a working skeleton. Writing a plugin explains every hook, the rules a plugin must keep, and how to pack it as a ZIP for Admin → Plugins → Upload.