Question cb_gender field problems

Hi Kunena Community!

I've been using this fine component for about three weeks, and I am very content with it. It does all I need and looks good when doing so

Now I have a problem. I'm using Community Builder 1.2 stable, and being the idiot I am, I deleted the gender field because I was something like "Meh, won't need it anyway." Now that my community grows, I'd like to give them the possibility to search by gender, have their gender displayed in Kunena etc.

Interestingly, my gender is being displayed (with a Mars sign) in the forums even though there is no cb_gender field in CB anymore. All other users don't have any gender sign.

I tried messing around with new fields, creating single choice dropdown fields witht the title "Geschlecht" (German for "gender") and values "männlich" (male) and "weiblich" female. I applied a gender to a random user for tests, and opened a thread that contains posts of this particular user - no gender display. Tried to make a radio button field with the same info, no good.

I assume I'd just have to recreate the standard cb_gender field, but I can't figure out how. Also, I wonder why my gender is being displayed properly (even though I NEVER defined it) even though I had deleted the original cb_gender field ...

Any help greatly appreciated!

Thanks

Strictly-speaking, this is a question about Community Builder and not a questiona about Kunena, however because StrikeDaMic wrote

Interestingly, my gender is being displayed (with a Mars sign) in the forums even though there is no cb_gender field in CB anymore. All other users don't have any gender sign.

I will do my best to explain the issues.

Community Builder has its own user profiling data [jos_comprofiler] which is separate from the Joomla user profiling data [jos_users] which is separate from the Kunena user profiling data [jos_fb_users]. Somehow there's a mechanism to keep these sources of data in synch with one another; it's not 100% reliable, though, and there are management tools in the backend which repair the occasional discrepancies that occur from time to time.

It should be said, when you're working with Kunena forums you are, for the most part, using Kunena user profile data. We've had many discussions about the desirability of managing this data under CB and integrating it into Kunena, just as much as we've had many discussions about the desirability of incorporating Kunena forum information as a "tabbed item" when a you're viewing a user's CB profile. I don't know whether there's a consensus view on whether it's desirable to incoporate Kunena into CB or vice versa; whether or not it's desirable, it's certainly proven difficult in practice to achieve a satisfactory solution.

The male "Mars" symbol you've seen in forums, is obtained from the Kunena user profile database ... not the CB one! However, just because that's the way it is, doesn't mean that you're unable to search the userlist on a similarly defined field in Community Builder. I say "similarly" defined because, although you can't [easily] design a CB search using data from a foreign [Kunena] table, if you knew how to construct an SQL SELECT statement, and you could be bothered to write the PHP script, you could effect a solution ... :S

First of all, I'm not aware of a "standard" cb_gender field that's deployed when you install CB. If you deleted such a field, you probably had created it as a custom field the first place. However, if you want to re-create the field, you're still left with the problem of how to populate it! :side:

Leaving that issue aside, you should be able to create a filed called "gender" using the CB Field Management tool (it will be stored as "cb_gender"); you can assign which tab you'd like it to be displayed; you can define this field as something you'd like to collect at user registration time, and you can use the CB List Management tool to filter your user lists on its value ... if that's what you want to do. However, you cannot use this field to populate the Kunena user profile database!

The reason that you will probably not be able to populate Kunena gender into a corresonding CB cb_gender (or vice versa) is because the datatype of the Kunena gender field is TINY_INT(4) and the datatype of your CB cb_gender field will be VARCHAR(255); one of them contains numbers, the other contains text. Text to numbers, numbers to text? You see the problem? From this point on, it just gets more and more difficult to explain.

Lastly, StrikeDaMic wrote

Also, I wonder why my gender is being displayed properly (even though I NEVER defined it) even though I had deleted the original cb_gender field ...

It's displayed "properly" because you did define it! You just didn't define your gender using CB; you defined the value in Kunena!

sozzled,

Thanks a lot for your long and interesting post. I can see you took your time to explain as good as possible, and I appreciate your help very much.

Since I coded a PHP/MySQL Database a few months ago, I am familiar with basic SQL commands and PHP.

OK, I understood that synching genders between Kunena (which I absolutely love) and CB is not possible because of field type differences. You said that I had defined my gender in Kunena - how so? In Kunena's User management, there is no possibility to change or define such a value, as far as I could see.

Am I overseeing something?

Thanks!

I'm glad I was some help.

To define the field in Community Builder use the CB Field Management tool:

1. Click "New Field"
2. Type: either Radio Buttons or Drop Down (Single Select)
3. Name: gender (it will be replaced with cb_gender)!!
4. Title: Gender
5. Add your values for "Male" and "Female"

That takes care of the Community Builder side of things (except that you'll want to produce a user list that's filtered on this field).

Yes, I still insist that you defined a value for the gender field in Kunena. Read this discussion for the clues.

I do know how to define a gender field in CB, and I already did so (using a Single Choice Dropdown List with the German terms for "Male" and "Female"). However, I would like some assistance - how do I access the gender value in Kunena?

Many thanks!

StrikeDaMic wrote:

How do I access the gender value in Kunena?

I'm sorry, I was in the process of revising my previous message and, I agree, I missed the importance of what you were asking. See www.kunena.com/forum?func=view&catid=5&id=6324 for the answers.