River items use an extension-less module

[ewinslow]

Two options:

1. Add another module specifically for the river called elgg-module-river or elgg-module-activity.

2. Come up with another component entirely (non-module) that could be used as the river entry. I think I prefer this option. Activity entries seem to have the following parts (in no particular order):
   • avatar of main actor/target
   • representative icon for type of activity
   • header/summary
   • primary + secondary content
   • primary + secondary menus
   • timestamp
   • related activity (likes, comments)

I checked facebook, twitter, github, buzz, all seem to incorporate these aspects, plus or minus.

[ewinslow]

During the creation of my facebook theme, I found that most river views in bundled plugins manually insert some html:

$content = '<div class="elgg-river-content">';
$content .= $stuff;
$content .= '</div>';

This kind of coding pattern is crying out for a template view that any river entry can use. I found it was much cleaner to do something like this:

//File: .../river/type/subtype/action.php

//build parts of river...

//insert parts into template:
echo elgg_view('<template view>', array(
    'summary' => "Evan did something",
    'message' => "Accompanying message from poster, if applicable",
    'attachment' => ..., //"attachment" view of activity's object
    'item' => $vars['item'],
    'icon' => ...,
));

The template view then takes care of the layout of the river entry, so themes only have to override one view to get a consistent change across the board. That's really what I'm looking for -- there's no reason that themes should have to "know" so much about all the different content plugins out there.

[cash]

This needs to be done soon if we're going to do it for 1.8 as plugin authors are starting to update plugins.

[cash]

See ​https://github.com/Elgg/Elgg/pull/35 for some great progress on this

[Cash Costello]

Merge pull request #35 - Fixes #3404, #3490

Changeset: 9edc8c6004d1236a21e03fb1c820a6e749f1ee3b