Partial site blocking

A similar mechanism is Shomer Shabes (18$ per month per site) as distributed by Lingo.

Is there a way to determine the visitor's location?

Actually, I should be asking, what would be an acceptable way of determining a user's location? How precise do we need to be?

I'll leave the jobs of determining a user's location and blocking the site to other modules. All the Sabbath module needs to do is return TRUE when given a time, latitude, and longitude that fall within the Sabbath.

I'll need help if we're going to add calculations other than sabbath to this module.

Fixed in CVS commit 84315.

I'll leave the jobs of determining a user's location and blocking the site to other modules. All the Sabbath module needs to do is return TRUE when given a time, latitude, and longitude that fall within the Sabbath.

Try to integrate it with the ip_locator module, which provides you with lattitude and lognitude information.

I am also checking if the gmap.module or location.module can help.

>
> [...] Shabbath and Yom Tov, [...] as required by the Torah.
> The module should also find out if the yom tov is one or two days,
>

You're expecting too much. We can't even say this module calculates the Jewish shabbath. It simply uses PHP's date_sunset() to calculate some astronomical shabbath.

The size of this module is misleading. The bulk belongs to a JPG picture --which I admit is beautiful.

>
> Try to integrate it with the ip_locator module, which [...]

(There's also the IP to Country module.)

Another approach is to find the user's timezone (or time offset) by parsing the result of Javascript's Date().toString() or Date().getTimezoneOffset().

> [...] Shabbath and Yom Tov, [...] should also find out if the
> yom tov is one or two days,
>

(There's a Jewish Calendar I wrote, which has a decent API. I'm planning to integrate it someday with Drupal's Calendar module when it (Calendar) becomes a bit more flexible in its theming.)

I think this module should focus on providing calculations. The sabbath block is provided simply to demonstrate what is possible. Once we find a suitable site blocking module, we can add a documentation page describing how to use it together with this module and an IP locator module.

I've created a separate module - Shabbat and Yom Tov Gaurd - to do the site blocking on shabbat. The module currently interfaces one external mechanism.

Wo you mean drupal can be used for censorship too?

Maybe we can block the palestinians with it?

We really need a couple of things for this.

First, the module should have an option to either use one of the IP_Locator/Location modules available to Drupal to determine whether it is Shabbat or not for the local user. One of these could be set as a pre-requisite. The other way would be to integrate with the geoip API from the people that provide the database GeoLiteCity.dat - which might be simpler by the way the code reads.

Then we need it to integrate with the block system to allow us to flag certain blocks as being unavailable during Shabbat. This way a teaching site can remain active during Shabbat yet remove the commercial side of it - banners, store access, donations, statistics, etc.

Along those same lines we may want to flag a block to be active on Shabbat - ie a live feed from the synagogue for those who cannot attend due to health or distance or a front page replacement of normal blocks with a parsha.

Additionally, we need instructions on code to add around other code to exempt it during Shabbat. In the Drigg theme google ads are currently coded into page.tpl.php and will need to be exempted by 'php - if' statements based on a return from this module's flagging operation.

I have used Drigg 6 to create a digg like site that is strictly religious. I really want to automate the process of blocking out google ads on Shabbat as many people are already using the site and some people come there to find parshot and drosh on Shabbat.

This would be preferable to paying a service to block the site or sections of the site on Shabbat - which could be considered a violation in itself. In this manner the server automates the process for the user and a third party need not be engaged to provide the service of blocking a service on Shabbat.

Toda.

Netzar ben Yaacov - nazarene.net

Wouldn't it be better to update the shabbat module than to try to add site blocking to this one?

Perhaps... But the Shabbat module takes the whole site down... Some sites of this nature will actually attract more traffic on Shabbat by their nature. So we don't want to kill the whole site - just the revenue generating aspects. Plus there may be desire to activate a block containing a feed or mp3.

Maybe what I am suggesting is another whole module to provide these additional functions with Sabbath and IP_Locator (Or similar) as dependancies.

I am not as concerned about it being 100% accurate as I think most people that are concerned about Sabbath timing are not online right at sunset, but are with family.

Dang, I wish I could code better... But I spent time learning Coldfusion instead of php because of an employer requirement... Now I dont do that anymore either...

Netzar ben Yaacov

Moving to the Shabbat module.