⚠️ NOTE: This project is no longer being maintained. Please feel free to fork it, clone it, make your own version of it, or whatever you wish.
by Craig Hendricks
codefenix@conchaos.synchro.net
telnet://conchaos.synchro.net
https://conchaos.synchro.net
This script parses user stats out of Synchronet BBS's log files and generates an animated Top-5 MSG bulletin (or optionally a simple one) which can be displayed to users during login.
It parses the log files (mmddyy.log) in the /sbbs/data/logs directory. It keeps a tally of the following categories for each user:
- num_of_calls - how many times the user logged on
- time_on - total time in minutes spent online
- messages_read - number of messages the user read
- messages_posted - number of messages posted by the user
- emails - number of emails sent by the user
- feedback_sent - number of emails the user sent to the sysop
- files_uploaded - number of individual files uploaded by the user
- kb_uploaded - kb-worth of files uploaded by the user
- files_downloaded - number of individual files downloaded by the user
- kb_downloaded - kb-worth of files downloaded by the user
- doors_ran - number of external programs ran by the user
In addition, it also separately tracks the number of times each external program has been ran (displayed in simple mode only, and not to be confused the "doors_ran" value listed above. more on this below).
It stores this information in memory as JSON objects, sorts each category in order from highest values to lowest, and then outputs the categories to a static bulletin file.
The default animated bulletin output mode uses the topfiles.msg file as a template, and then appends the generated bulletin content to the end. It makes use of the AT codes DELAY and GOTOXY to display the results with an animation effect.
Optionally, a "simple" version of the output can be generated instead, which is just a continuous list of all categories with no AT codes used for animation.
Copy the following files to your /sbbs/mods directory:
- topfives.js: the script
- topfives.msg: template MSG file
- readme.txt: this file for reference :P
On the command line, change to your /sbbs/exec directory and call the script with jsexec using the following syntax:
jsexec topfives <month/year/lastyear/year number> [path_to_output] [simple]
To generate a Top-5 bulletin for the current month and display it during login:
jsexec topfives month c:\sbbs\text\menu\logon2.msg
(change the number in the logon MSG filename to your liking)
If no path_to_output is specified, output is written to /sbbs/mods/output.msg by default.
To generate a Top-5 bulletin for the previous year:
jsexec topfives lastyear
To generate a Top-5 bulletin for ANY year, just specify the year:
jsexec topfives 2019
Specify "simple" as the third parameter to generate a simple non-animated list of all available categories. The output path is required in "simple" mode.
jsexec topfives month c:\sbbs\text\menu\logon2.msg simple
Add a month and/or year call to your nightly BAT file or run it as a timed event in SCFG to automatically generate updated logon MSG bulletins each day.
cd c:\sbbs\exec
jsexec topfives month c:\sbbs\text\menu\logon2.msg
jsexec topfives year c:\sbbs\text\menu\logon3.msg
On my system, month bulletins generate nearly instantly, and a bulletin for 2021 took around 9 seconds to complete.
Yearly bulletins take several seconds to generate since the script obviously has to search through more log files to gather data. Boards with a lot of visitors every day will have larger log files, so the script will take longer to run. Your mileage may vary.
It's accurate as best I can tell. I've done some validation by comparing the numbers in the output to the search results of Notepad++'s "Find in files" function in the log file directory, as well as by comparing to the output of utilities which do similar things (top10usr, syncdoor, etc.).
Edit the included topfives.msg file to your liking using PabloDraw. MSG formats are recommended. The script should take anything you save and append the generated content to the end. It also will programmatically include a CtrlA-L sequence to the beginning to clear the screen before displaying the file, as well as remove any trailing CtrlA-Z sequence that exists at the end.
Note: Everything else that follows past this point involves making minor changes to the javascript file. If you feel comfortable making such changes, make a backup copy of topfives.js and proceed.
Some basic values at the top of the topfives.js script may be changed to suit your preferences. They're located between the lines labeled "Configurable Options Start" and "Configurable Options End".
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If you want to include the sysop in the bulletins, change IGNORE_SYSOP from true (default) to false.
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Change the OUTPUT_DELAY to adjust the animation speed, where 1 = 1 tenth of a second. 2 seems comfortable and not too slow, so that's the default.
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You can even change the bulletin from a Top-5 to a Top-10 by setting the TOP_NUM value, however, values larger than 5 will not look right with the included topfives.msg template file, and the default category placements, so it's probably best used with "simple" bulletins.
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The lines in each category are formatted using the strings are stored in SIMPLE_LIST_FMT and ANIM_LIST_FMT. The top #1 line is given a different format string in SIMPLE_LIST_FMT_HL and ANIM_LIST_FMT_HL respectively (HL meaning "highlighted").
The SIMPLE_LIST_HDR_FMT is the formatting string for the header above each category in simple mode. For the default mode, there is ANIM_LIST_HDR_FMT as well as ANIM_LIST_HDR_FMT2. Why two? Because the output is animated. This lets you specify two different "frames" of formatting. For example, the default values fade from standard blue to high-intensity blue.
ANIM_LIST_HDR_FMT = "\1n\1b%s"; // standard blue ANIM_LIST_HDR_FMT2 = "\1b\1h%s"; // high-intensity blueRefer to the Synchronet Wiki page for CTRL-A code coloring: http://wiki.synchro.net/custom:ctrl-a_codes
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Lastly, if you want to change which categories get displayed in the bulletin, edit the "ANIM_CATEGORY_#" values to your liking. The default included topfives.msg template file has room for about 6 categories.
Acceptable ANIM_CATEGORY_# values include:
- num_of_calls
- time_on
- messages_read
- messages_posted
- emails
- feedback_sent
- files_uploaded
- kb_uploaded
- files_downloaded
- kb_downloaded
- doors_ran
The Top-5 most ran door programs (not to be confused with the Top-5 users who ran doors) is not available in the default animated output mode. There are a couple reasons for this: 1) at the time of this writing, the default mode only uses the "user" json object in memory, and the most ran doors are tracked in a separate json object, and 2) door program names tend to be longer than user names and would therefore likely appear truncated in the default mode anyway.
The ANIM_CATEGORY_#_HDR values are the headers for the categories. These may be anything you want, but should be kept short (24 characters or fewer) so they display OK.
The ANIM_CATEGORY_#_X and ANIM_CATEGORY_#_Y values are the X and Y coordinates of where the category will be shown onscreen; X is the column and Y is the row. If you decide to change these, it may take some trial-and-error to get everything looking how you want.
By default, the categories are presented in the following sequence:
+------------+------------+------------+
| Category 1 | Category 3 | Category 5 |
+------------+------------+------------+
| Category 2 | Category 4 | Category 6 |
+------------+------------+------------+
ANIM_TIMEFRAME_HDR_X and ANIM_TIMEFRAME_HDR_Y are the X and Y coordinates of the timeframe header (ie: "For January '21" or "For the year '21").
Lastly, ANIM_END_PAUSE_X and ANIM_END_PAUSE_Y are the X and Y coordinates of where the pause prompt gets written at the end of the bulletin.
I believe that the above available customization options are enough for most sysops to fully make the resulting bulletins "their own". From this point on, it's assumed that you have enough javascript knowledge to make any further customizations, as they would require more changes to the script than simply editing the constant values at the top. For example, if you want to completely change how categories get displayed in both the simple and default modes, you can do this by editing, rearranging, or removing (or better yet just commenting out with //) the function calls to "defaultOutput" and "simpleOutput".
Have fun! I hope people find this script useful.
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Add a config file so that the javascript file doesn't require modification for certain customization options. I admit I was too lazy to implement this on the initial version, plus I liked how short and simple the script was.
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Currently the script parses all available data from the logs, regardless of whether it ultimately gets written to the bulletin. Not a huge deal, but it's still wasteful. Might be nice to make it so it pulls data from the logs only if it's going to be used in the output, but I don't consider it a high priority item.