Port Rules Integration

Hey Berdir,

I applied the patch in #1 successfully, but I can't find any Userpoints actions, conditions, or events in the Rules UI. I tried clearing my cache and updating to the latest versions of Rules and Entity. But still no luck....

Am I missing something? Or is it possible that there's a bug causing the actions, conditions, and events supplied by your patch not to be loaded?

Thanks,
Ben

Hmmm... that would be pretty embarrassing. Let me check...

Wow, it looks like I did forget to enable the sub-module... sorry about that! ;-)

I just finished some initial testing of the "Grant points to a user" action. Wow, this is really working well, amazing for an initial patch. I've confirmed that the User, Points, Points Category, Description, and Operation fields are all working well. I was even able to use Rules' token replace to put tokens in the Description and Operation fields. I also confirmed that the entity type and entity id are working properly... I used this to automatically link the operation field to the node when using the "node is published" event.

Just a few UI things:

A. Maybe the "entity type" field should be a single-line textfield (or dropdown menu) instead of a text area? It just seems a little weird to have a huge text area and then type the word "node" in it. A dropdown menu could be handy if the dropdown menu could be populated with all entity types on the site. Since most sites won't have more than a dozen or so entities, this could be an easier way to choose.

B. I'm wondering if the "Operation" field should be a single-line or double-line textfield rather than a text area. While it is possible to have a long operation field, it seems like the Userpoints UI is mostly designed for this to be fairly short.

C. I'm wondering if there is any way to specify within rules the "Expiration date" for the points. This is available on the userpoints add form and it could be handy to specify this within rules. Not sure if this is possible.

D. I'm wondering if there is any way to specify within rules whether or not a points award is approved or not. For instance, if you're set to have all points moderated, it would be handy to set certain rules to be approved automatically (or vice versa). But not sure if this is possible.

--Ben

Berdir,

I've continued my testing with conditions now, but I'm a bit confused with how to use (and test) the new "Check the transaction category" condition. In the Rules UI, I'm getting two points category fields... one that has an autocomplete labeled "data selector" and one that has a downdown menu (select list). In the autocomplete, however, the available data selectors are blank.

So I'm not sure what exactly I'm supposed to compare. I'm trying to use this with a "node is published" event and the "Grant points to a user" action...

Is anything missing from the UI or am I just not understanding how to use this properly?

Thanks,
Ben

Also, I just tried to use the "Data comparison" condition, but I'm not seeing any available data selectors related to userpoints.

More specifically, based on your comments in #1, I was looking for data selectors related to points, category, user, total_category_points, and total_points. But I'm not seeing any of these in the DATA SELECTORS fieldset.

Currently, I only see default data selectors for site and node. What are the data selectors that should be appearing?

As soon as I can find these, I will do more testing of conditions...

--Ben

Okay, in regard to my comments in #6 and #7, I've got this figured out now: Basically, the current Rules implementation only supplies conditions on the "User was awarded points" event. Since I was trying to use conditions with the "Grants points to a user" action, they weren't showing up properly.

I talked this over with Berdir in IRC and he suggested that we would need some conditions that don't just work on a userpoints transaction but also on a user. Then the conditions will always be available when a user object is available (which could be the current user, node author, user who gains points, etc.)

So based on my conversation with Berdir, here are a couple more to-dos (continuing the item list from #5):

E. Create Rules conditions that also work on a user (not just on a userpoints transaction). For instance, such a condition could be used to create a rule that grants points to a user on a certain event only if they already have accumulated more than 25 points.

F. Create a "status" condition. This would allow you to take an action on the "User was awarded points event" only if points have been approved, declined, added to the moderation queue, not added to the moderation queue, etc. Basically, this allows us to create Rules that respond to the various states in the points moderation system. One thing we'll have to check is whether the "User was awarded points" event fires even when the points award first goes to moderation queue. We'll also need to determine how a condition can be created for the case in which points were declined (since points aren't actually being awarded).

Finally, I should mention that I tested the "Grants points to a user" action and everything is working great. So that's it for testing on my end. I'll look forward to testing the next patch as soon as you have it! :-)

--Ben

Berdir and I continued our discussion in IRC and I'm documenting it in this comment. We agree that there is a need for a before/after event to do data comparisons.

A use case for this is preventing point totals from going negative. Basically, we need to be able to do a data comparison before the points are actually awarded/deducted... then we could see if the new points deduction would cause the total to be below zero and take the appropriate action.

So I'm adding one more item to the to-do list:

G. Create a "Before awarding points" event (similar to "Before saving a comment" or "Before saving content" that rules supplies). The idea would be to check the results of a points grant before the points are actually granted. We may also need a "Cancel points award" action as well.

--Ben

One more thing:

H. I'm wondering if there is any way to specify within rules the "Reference" for the points. This is available on the userpoints add form and it could be handy to specify this within rules. I noticed this was missing for rules-generated transactions when creating a view of userpoints transactions.

--Ben

Wow, nice job. This will be fun to test. I'll get on it shortly.

--Ben

I've done some initial testing of the latest Rules patch (mostly the "Grant points to a user" action) and it's working very well. We've got a lot of functionality and control now. Here are some things I've noticed:

1. I'm getting the following error message on the top of the main Rules config page:

Notice: Undefined index: userpoints_event_points_awarded in RulesPluginUI::overviewTable() (line 636 of/Users/benkaplan/git/drupal-dev/sites/all/modules/rules/rules/ui/ui.core.inc).

2. If I add the 'Grant points to a user' action, I'm getting the following error message at the top of the page to configure the action:

Notice: Undefined property: RulesAction::$uid in userpoints_get_categories() (line 1070 of /Users/benkaplan/git/drupal-dev/sites/all/modules/userpoints-DRUPAL-7--1/userpoints.module).

3. For the 'Grant points to a user' action, only the "General" category is being shown in the Points category select list. This means you can't currently select a category other than General.

4. The word "Wether" is misspelled in the the following descriptive text. We also might take this as an opportunity to clean up some of this descriptive text:

a) Change: "Wether to show a message to the user for this transaction or not." To this: "Whether or not to show a message to the user when this !points transaction is added."

b) Change: "Wether this should be moderated or not." To this: "Whether or not this !points transaction should be moderated."

5. Change the label "Expiry Date" to "Expiration Date"

6. The expiry date is being successfully saved, but if you go to edit the action, the field appears blank. This makes it very easy to totally remove the expiration date if you are editing the action.

7. This may be something for a separate issue. But it was so minor that I thought I'd mention it. In the database, it looks like the "expired" field has an incorrect comment. It says "User ID" currently, but it looks like that field is meant to indicate if the transaction is expired or not.

--Ben

Update: I did some testing of the 'Load points of a user' action and it's working very well. I used it both as as a stand-alone action and as part of a condition (which was part of a rule set) and everything worked great.

Specifically, I tested whether I could award 100 bonus points to a user (when they published a new article) if their General points balance was greater than 4000 points. I used a similar rule set configuration to what we used when testing Private Message's 'Load unread messages' action. And it worked just how it was supposed to (with one small exception described below).

I did notice one quirk, however, that may be related to 3. above (in comment #13). When these 100 bonus points were awarded, the total points listed in the drupal_set_message was actually incorrect. The total points being listed was for all categories combined even though the message said if was for the general category. So this is the weird part: I had a separate 'Grant points' action being run first in the same rule... for that message, the total was correctly showing the General category points as the total. But when the bonus points action ran after that first action, the total for this second message was then incorrect (it was showing all categories, not the General category total).

If any of this is unclear, I can probably explain it better in IRC.

--Ben

Update #2: I noticed something interesting when using Rules in conjunction with our new /myuserpoints page. In the reason column on that page, the operation of the rules-drive points transaction is being displayed. But shouldn't the description be displayed here (assuming there is one as part of the rule)?

I noticed this when I had some rules set to be moderated. If you go to the moderation approval confirmation page, the "reason" being displayed (which is displayed in the description area in our latest patch) is the the transaction description. Yet, this doesn't match the reason on the /myuserpoints page because the "operation" is displayed as the "reason" on the page.

If available, the "description" should be used as the "reason" on rules-created points transactions. The "operation" would only be used if the description was not filled in as part of the rule.

--Ben

Hey Berdir,

I've confirmed that all errors described above are now fixed.

I just noticed one additional error in my testing:

A. The expiration date field in the "Grant points to user" action appears to be overwritten by the Userpoints default expiration setting. Basically, I tried setting an expiration date in the rules action either with an absolute time or a data selector (such as the current time plus an offset). No matter what I choose, the expiration setting at admin/config/people/userpoints/settings is being used.

Also, if I leave the expiration setting blank on the "Grant points to user" action page (so that the points won't have an expiration date), it is still being given the UP default expiration date. Should there be a checkbox setting to use the default UP expiration setting (or not)?

--Ben

I just tested the "User was awarded points" event and it's working well. My test case is sending a Private Message to the points recipient when points are awarded.

Just one issue: The only replacement patterns available for the PM subject and message body fields are related to "Site Information" (or the "Fetched entity" if I loaded a User ID as the message sender). What we really need here is replacement patterns for the Userpoints transaction including points awarded, category of points, approved or moderated, reason, expiration, and timestamp. This way you can send a PM message that includes information about the specific points transaction.

Are those replacement patterns something that can be added?

--Ben

Finally, I also did testing of the new "User will be awarded points" event. It doesn't appear to be working properly yet in combination with the "Grant points to user" action.

To test it, I created a rule that was intended to alter the amount of points being awarded. To simply things, I didn't use a condition. I just figured I'd try to alter any points award coming through the system. So on the "User will be awarded points" event, I created an action to "Grant points to a user" and tried to award 3 points in a different category.

When I then tried to add points manually to a user through the UI, no points were awarded, there was no drupal set message, and after submitting the points I was returned back to a blank "add points" admin screen.

Any ideas? Or am I somehow configuring this wrong?

The use case for this would be to add a condition that, for instance, prevents points from going negative (by just setting total points to zero). Or would it be better to have a "Decline points to a user" action to prevent the points award altogether? Or should we have a "Set user's point total" action to just set the user's points to zero in a given category?

--Ben

P.S. I was able to get the "User will be awarded points" event working with PM's "Send user a message" action. Of course, that works pretty much identically to the "User was awarded points" event so I'm not sure if it's a good test.

Hey Berdir,

The new patch is working great. Expiration (#17) is now fully functioning and on #19 I just wasn't using the "set data value" action. So I tested that action (in conjunction with the "User will be awarded points" event) and it's working great as well. So this is ready to go and I'm marking this RTBC!

--Ben

P.S. As you suggested, I'll open up new threads for added rules functionality at a later time. Here's a quick summary of what we could add later:

a. When changing the transaction "status" on the "User will be awarded points" event, the "set data value" action won't save. The following message is displayed: "The selected data property doesn't support writing."

b. If the default Userpoints expiration setting is set to expire and you want the rules action to never expire, there is currently no way to do this. It would be nice if you could type "none" or "0" within Rules to avoid setting an expiration date on the transaction.

c. Create replacement patterns within Rules for the Userpoints transaction including points awarded, category of points, approved or moderated, reason, expiration, and timestamp. (#18 above).