Reply To: Guys….. What is the point of including filters if…
I figured you were referring to the Activity table 🙂
Basically, we thought the way we do it now was a good solution several years ago. We were particularly concerned with how large the Activities DB table(s) might get, as we expect them (and probably still do) to be the tables with the largest amount of stored data as every other component adds stuff to the activity stream. If I remember correctly, the idea was that storing the entire string would be the quickest approach — and with the state of BuddyPress’ code base all those years ago, it was probably the right decision.
Several years later, the shortcomings are now fairly obvious — can’t filter it easily, if you change how the string is constructed – only new items have that new format, the old items keep their old format, can’t translate it very easily.
This is likely to be changed in a near-future release to a more dynamically constructed string of text, and the ticket @modemlooper linked to is a good place to keep an eye out if you’d like to help us build it.
